Black Hat Jack (3 page)

What was left of the day was getting a sack thrown over it, and what light there had been through the windows and the windy cracks in the boards where there wasn’t anymore. Lanterns was lit.

“I figured I’d let it lay until we was kind of drunk, as that’s how I take things better,” Jack said. “But me and Nat here, we seen some Comanche, and then we seen what they had been at. A fellow who was cut up and burned and scalped. Had a black beard. Wasn’t much to tell about his face, as he was knifed-up good. Color of eyes was two dark holes, and so was the nose. Can any of you put some hair to that, some nose and eyes? He was missing his johnson too.”

“Was he tall?” said Jimmy, the man who asked if I was a nigger when we first come in.

“I don’t know he was so tall,” Jack said. “Do you, Nat?”

“Not as tall as me,” I said. “Maybe tall as you. He had a big belly, but that may have been because they cut him open and his guts was pushed out.”

“That will swell you,” Billy said. “Being dead swells you, but guts right out there in the open in the sunlight, even if the air’s cold, it’ll swell a fellow. Everything gets bloated in size. A small man can look like a carnival wrestler. I’ve seen it.”

“Where was the body?” Jimmy asked.

“Up near Chicken Creek,” Jack said.

“I’m going to guess it’s Hutchinson,” said Jimmy. “That’s the direction he took, and he ain’t come back. He and his partner went for a hunt on their own, even though we didn’t think there was no use in it. We all felt the herd hadn’t come far enough this way yet. Let them come to you, is what I say. You get so you can tell how they’re going to do.”

“Only way you can tell,” Billy said, “is if someone tells you they’re coming or the buffalo show up and stand on your feet. The rest of us can tell, but you can’t tell your ass from a hole in the ground.”

“The hole is below me, the ass is behind me,” said Jimmy.

“Goddamn, he’s gotten smart,” the barkeep said.

“His partner,” Jimmy said. “I figure they got him too, or otherwise he’d be snugged up here with the rest of us, out of the cold. He wasn’t one for more hardship than he had to endure. Hutchinson, he might could take it, but that partner of his… What was his name?”

Nobody knew.

“Whatever it was,” Jimmy said, “I didn’t never call him that twice, as I didn’t care for him. I think he liked his hand in his pocket more than he liked a woman, way he talked. All that said, I guess ain’t nobody deserves that, being cut up by them savages like they was a link of sausage for breakfast.”

“Them savages ain’t no worse than us,” Jack said. “They ain’t ones to keep their word any better than us cause they know ours isn’t any good, but they got a streak of honor about them, mean as they are. You might could ask Nat here about savages. His color and his kind have seen plenty of that, and they were white-skins. As far as them redskins go, this is where their people lived before we knew there was a dirt beyond the ocean. Someone come to take land we owned, we’d buck too.”

“Ain’t like they’re doing anything with it,” Jimmy said.

“Who says they got to?” Jack said. “And what have you ever done for this country other than slaughter buffalo and shit in the bushes?”

“You do the same,” Jimmy said.

“I do,” Jack said, “and that’s why I say ain’t none of us worth a flying fuck in a snow storm. Fill up my goddamn cup again. Let’s lift one to poor old Hutchinson and that other dead fellow we don’t know the name of. May Hutchinson stay buried, and may that nameless son-of-a-bitch be somewhere alive, and if dead, may the wolves eat his bones and may their shit grow green-green grass.”

That was the toast, and I actually sipped a bit more, but just a bit. As I put my cup down, Jack turned to it, and knowing my ways, took mine and drained the remains.

There was more toasts and more cups poured, me having turned mine over so as to show I was done, and as the night went on the voices got louder. There was jokes and lies told, and some things that might have been the truth. A man in a bowler hat said how he could throw his bowler hat and make it fit on anyone’s head. The barkeep volunteered as victim, as he was hatless, and Bowler Hat, whose real name was Zeke, I discovered, cocked that bowler with careful aim, one eye squinted, and away it sailed. We watched it travel across those darkish quarters, and hit the barkeep in the face, banging his eye. Well, then the fight was on. Bets was placed quick as possible, but it wasn’t quick enough. Zeke took a beating so fast, he hit the ground before his knocked-out teeth. Afterward the barkeep punched his fists through Zeke’s hat, so that rain and sunshine would be the same to the top of Zeke’s head.

We all decided this was just too mean, and we all chipped in and Jimmy went next door to the store, and come back with a new hat, not a bowler, but a wide-brimmed one the color of wet dirt, and tossed it on Zeke’s chest. He then told us he was happy to report that Mrs. Olds was sleeping peacefully in the middle of the floor, her head on a flour-sack, one eye swollen shut. Mr. Olds was watching her carefully, knowing she would finally come awake. He was living in fear of the natural born fact that he had to sleep sometime, or so said Jimmy, though as I have reported, all of us was something of exaggerators.

After a few pukings and passing-outs, things began to wind down considerable, and there was only a few more shenanigans, among them a cuss-fight, which was seeing who could string the most cuss words together and have it make some kind of sense. Jack won. Well, there was a peach-eating contest. Some fat blowhard said he wished he had some peaches, and that he could eat his weight in them, to which Bat replied, “I judge you about two hundred and ten, and they got canned peaches next door.”

“Well,” said the blowhard. “Maybe not my weight.”

“Let me see you eat twenty-five cans of peaches, and I will give you twenty-five dollars,” Bat said.

“That’s a lot of money,” said the blowhard.

“You fail, you give me twenty-five dollars, or that spare Hawken rifle you got.”

“What the hell you want that for,” some fellow said to Bat. “Now that they got a Sharps, them Hawkins ain’t the gun you need.”

“Call me a fucking historian,” Bat said.

So it got called that there would be a peach-eating contest, and somebody went next door to the store and bought the peaches with money we all chipped in, and they was opened a can at a time with a pocket knife. Damn if Blowhard, as I had come know him with some affection, take to them without pause, lifting the cans and pouring them peaches and the syrup they was in down his gullet like a wet fish sliding between mossy rocks. About the time he got to the fifteenth can and was looking spry, Bat started to pale. I was wondering if he had twenty-five dollars. On went Blowhard, volunteers opening the cans for him, him lifting them to his lips, gulping them like water, and then when he hit can twenty, he began to shake a little and took to a stool, sat there with the sweats.

This heartened Bat, but there was still some worry, as there was only five cans more.

“I got to pause,” said Blowhard. Then he burped real loud, cut a fart that made the nastiest among us ill, and went back at it. He swallowed all twenty-five cans of peaches, took twenty-three dollars and a pocketknife from Bat for the rest, had a whisky, lay on the ground and cried.

More time passed, and by then we was all sagging, especially them that had been about serious nipping. It was decided that we’d hunt in the early morning, so some of the men went to set their skinning wagons and clean their rifles, and make necessary preparations. Me and Jack was shooters on this trip, not skinners, so all we had to do was wait until first light, which was going to come mighty early.

Jack and me decided we’d stretch out on the floor of the saloon, like some of the others. We got our bed rolls and laid them flat. We took off our coats. The night air was no longer cool. It was already growing hot from the oncoming day, though darkness was still about us. We was slipping our pistols and knives off our persons when Blowhard began to roll around on the floor moaning. “Oh, my pancreas. I’ve busted my pancreas.”

Jack hooted. “You goddamn idiot. You wouldn’t know where your pancreas was if I cut you open and laid your hand on it. Go to the outhouse, jackass.”

Blowhard got up with a lot of effort and went to the outhouse, saying, “I still believe it’s my pancreas.”

Me and Jack laid our weapons at the sides of our bed rolls, then dropped down on top of them to sleep. I got dunked into a well of slumber mighty fast and deep, and that’s why when that loud snapping sound come, I thought I was a ghost already.

Jumping up, grabbing my Winchester, looking around, I saw Jack and a room full of men doing the same. That precarious timber I had mentioned, why it had snapped and the roof was sagging.

“It’s got about enough strength to hold a few more minutes if a fly don’t light on it,” Jack said.

That led to some of the men going outside with the idea to tear down one of the poles that was supposed to be part of the Adobe Walls fortifications, and substitute it for a new support pole. The rest of us took to the roof to pull off some of the sod to lighten the roof, which led to some bad gaps in places. If it rained, a lot of us and a lot of the bar would get wet.

When I was done helping, I went outside. It was still dark, but there was streaks of pink in it like blood poisoning. I looked at that for awhile, then noticed my horse wasn’t in the place where I had corralled it. As the blacksmith was up and about, I went over and said, “Where’s my horse?”

“It and the others are picketed down by the creek,” he said.

“By the creek? Why, that’s a good stretch away. Why don’t you just offer them to the Indians, and tell them to come back tomorrow for the saddles.”

“Now listen here young fellow, you better watch your mouth,” he said.

Jack had come up now. He said, “Where’s my horse?”

“Picketed at the creek,” the blacksmith said.

“The creek?” Jack said. “Why the pig shit would you put him down by the creek? There’s Indians about. It’s where they live, goddamn it, out there in the nothing, the prairies and the trees. Is your head packed with mud?”

“A horse has got to drink,” said the blacksmith.

“Bring the water to them,” Jack said. “That’s what buckets are for.”

“It’s a lot of trips,” said the blacksmith.

“It is at that,” I said. “That’s what we’re paying for. And besides, you could shorten the trips if you carried the buckets only as far as the well, which is right over there.”

“It was just easier to take care of them all in one swoop at the creek,” he said.

“But it’s still a bad idea,” I said.

“What he said,” Jack said.

“Oh now, don’t give me trouble,” said the blacksmith. “It’s alright. I’ll go down there and get them right now if you want them.”

“We ain’t ready to ride nowhere,” Jack said. “But bring them here close, and watch them. Or give us back our money.”

“I got a mind to do it,” he said.

“Tell you what,” I said. “Take out for the grain and such for the horses, and give the rest of the money back. We’ll go down to the creek and get our own horses.”

“You do that,” he said.

“The money,” Jack said.

“Now, tell you what,” said the blacksmith. “I’ll go get them, and I’ll keep the money. I’ll keep them up here for you, way you like. I’ll be so sweet to them they won’t want to leave.”

Jack looked at me.

I said, “Your call.”

“Oh, what the hell,” Jack said. “I have by nature a goddamn sweet disposition. Go down there and get them and keep the money.”

So away went the blacksmith.

When he was gone, Jack said, “Goddamn stupid ass.”

We walked to where the walls was broken down the most, and as the light had cracked the sky good and was falling over things like sunlight was heavy, we looked and seen the blacksmith hustling toward the creek. There was a run of trees along it, and our horses and others was picketed out, like they was an offering to the Comanche.

“It’s like he’s lived in a tree all his life,” Jack said. “He hasn’t learned a damn thing. It’s a wonder he ain’t dead. I think he’s the kind of man that will run for politics when he gets the chance.”

We watched as our horses was taken off the picket line. The blacksmith had ropes looped over their heads and noses, and he was leading them toward us. That’s when he threw up his arms and let go of the horses and made a coughing sound, staggered forward, then began to run. He headed toward us like he had been born on a hill, one leg seeming shorter than the other. But closer he got, we could see something sticking out of the back of his calf, causing him to limp. It was an arrow. Now our horses was loose, the others was there for the Comanche to take, and the dumb blacksmith had an arrow in his leg, which at that moment was the lesser of it to me.

“We got to get them horses,” Jack said.

I had left my Winchester inside for the moment, but I had my handguns, and so did Jack, so we broke for the creek like we was running to a party, and in a way, we would be if them Indians got us. They had to be situated down in that creek.

The blacksmith ran right past us, saying, “This way, you fools.”

I realized then he might actually be smarter than we were. We kept running though, and when we reached the picket line some arrows whizzed by us like hornets. I pulled my pistols, one in either hand, and started firing toward the creek. I heard a grunt from there, and then we was at the string of horses. Some of the other men from the fortifications, such as they was, had come to do the same, rescue their horses. Bullets barked and arrows whistled. Pretty soon all those horses was free, and we might actually have hit some Indians. I know that grunt I heard sounded serious enough. Here’s the thing though. We didn’t actually see none of them.

The horses was loose, and we started running them toward the walls, and there was other men there now, trying to run them into the corrals. The only horse that wasn’t there was Satan. He had taken to the prairie or was already captured by a Comanche. Jack’s horse walked from where he was and went into the corral as if he had just remembered he forgot something there.

We looked up and seen the ridge that was beyond the creek and the trees was filled with mounted Indians. Not ten or twenty, but more of them than you could count with a pencil and paper.

There have been all manner of estimates since the fight at Adobe Walls, and I don’t think any of them have nailed the truth to the wall. Some said we was eighteen men and one woman, some we was eighteen counting the woman, and others have said we was twenty-eight. And though I must admit I didn’t take a head count and write down everyone’s names, I would say to you that we was over thirty, maybe thirty-five.

Problem was there was a lot more Indians. At a guess, I’d say there was at least five hundred of them. I’ve heard said there was a thousand, which is too much. I’ve heard two hundred, which is too few. Let’s just say there was enough there to give concern. And let me tell you, they was a sight, them redskins. All festooned in war bonnets, or plumes of feathers stuck to the side of their heads. Them that was bare-headed had hair greased out with buffalo fat, and it shined in the sun. They was all half-naked, or full-naked, but for strands of leather around their necks, wrists, waists, and ankles, from which hung ornaments of brass and silver and bright-white bone. Many of them had round shields of wood and folded buffalo hide. Their horses was painted up in all kinds of colors, yellow and reds, and blues, and enough scalps hung from their bridles to supply hair enough for every white man in the state of Texas to have a wig made, and one that would soundly fit them. I just took it in at a glimpse, mind you, as it didn’t seem standing still was a good idea, but it was a sight. Majestic and wickedly beautiful, but at the same time enough to make you wet yourself and look for a hole to crawl in.

From the side come running a couple of men waving their arms, one of them yelling, “The wagons, there’s dead men in them. They done been snuck on and kilt.”

They meant some of the buffalo hunters that had gone to sleep away from the saloon. This all seems mighty odd in the telling, us out there in Comanche country, the blacksmith picketing the horses at a creek, and then them men that going out to sleep in their wagons, away from the main gathering of us, and all of us armed. But that’s how it was. All of them, and I have to include myself, had become too confident; the confidence afforded to us not by common sense, but by lust for the dollar.

Another man ran up from behind us and was almost shot by all of us. “They got the peach-eater. He’s out in the shitter, they turned it over on him and killed him with his ass hanging out, the sons-of-dog-bitches.”

“Get inside the store,” Jack yelled. This was like asking a fish to swim or a bird to fly. Men was already swarming for the door, and at the same time them Comanche was whooping and howling and riding down off that hill. As we got to the door, we seen there was Indians on foot that had snuck upon the camp. Truth was, that support pole cracking had got us stirring just in time to discover all them savages. They was starting to surround us.

I was still handling my pistols, and I wheeled and shot one of those Indians that was on foot dead, just as he reached a low point in the wall. I was about to shoot another come from the same direction, a little man with long, dark hair in braids, wearing all white buckskins, or at least they had started out white, when he jerked both hands above his head, started waving them like he was trying to catch humming birds.

“Don’t shoot me,” he said. “Save me a place inside. Don’t shoot my ass. I’m a white man.”

It was reckoned, by me at least, that it might be some kind of trick, but that voice was pure Texas, and as he come on closer, bullets darting by him and slamming into the low walls near us, arrows flocking around his head like birds, it was clear he wasn’t no Indian. I might also mention that though he run with some vigor, he was a sloppy runner, his elbows flying all over and his arms now flapping at his sides like he was trying to fan a fire out on his ass.

When he got to the wall, however, he proved quite nimble. He come over it with a leap, landed on his feet, and passed me on his way inside the saloon.

Well, here come them Indians then, and I seen then that they wasn’t all Comanche. There was Cheyenne out there too, but I didn’t stop to make sure I was correct on the matter by checking out their hairdos and such. We rushed inside and closed the door, and hadn’t no more than thrown the latch over it, than they was beating on it with fists, bows, lances and rifles. They was hooting and a hollering so loud it was setting my teeth on edge.

Now they was at the windows, breaking them, firing in. They hit somebody, cause I heard him yell out, and when I turned he was on the ground at my feet, having passed his shadow to the other side. That’s how close I come to getting elected.

I had a clear path view to the window, because many of the men had dropped to the ground or cuddled up behind something like it was their best friend. I cut down with that loop-cock Winchester, riddling the frame of the window something furious, knocking out what glass was left, as well as sending lead bees through it. One of them plowed a furrow through an Indian’s scalp, dropping him like a bad habit. The others that had been swarming there at the window, even planning on crawling through, was now gone, having decided on another game.