Curly Bill and Ringo (4 page)

“Well, at least you’ve still got the store,” Curly said, trying to cheer him up.

“That’s what I come in to talk to Grady about, to see if he’ll take it off my hands,” Uncle Willy said. “He already owns half of it, and to hear him tell it we been losin’ money now for months. Hell, I reckon he’s stealin’ me blind, too.”

Curly looked silently at the rancher and saw him looking off down the street with damp eyes. “The livery stable is losin’ money too,” he said. “I don’t see how I can afford to keep it open much longer, the way things is goin’.”

By then he had Curly feeling so bad about rustling his cows that the big outlaw couldn’t think of anything to say. He just sighed and threw his expensive cigar away. He hated for a poor man like Uncle Willy to see him indulging in such a luxury—especially since Uncle Willy knew where the money for it had come from. Curly was also a little embarrassed by the fact that he was wearing a new suit of clothes while Uncle Willy had on the old range garb he always seemed to wear. Once or twice Curly had caught him studying his outfit through hard narrow eyes. It was plain that Uncle Willy wasn’t as fond of him as he had been, or else he had just decided that he couldn’t afford his friendship any longer.

The rancher turned and went into the store, saying with his back to the rustler, “Well, I’ll prob’ly see you again ‘fore I head back for the ranch, Curly.”

Not if Curly saw him first. He had already spoiled a fine morning with his self-pity and his long sour face. And Curly still didn’t know for sure whether he had sent for Ringo or not. You could never tell about Uncle Willy. He hardly ever told you what he was actually thinking or what he actually planned to do. His talk of selling out or abandoning his ranch might have been just to throw Curly off.

Curly went to the restaurant and ordered coffee and apple pie for himself and Virgil “Zebra” Duncan, who hung around there all the time and helped Shorty Mack out when he needed it. Virgil showed Curly his pictures of zebras that he had torn out of various books and magazines and told him, for the hundredth time, that he was going to Africa just as soon as he could save up some money and catch him one of them striped horses. Virgil had no interest in ordinary horses, and Curly had never seen him on one, but he thought about zebras all the time.

“Don’t you think they’d make smart riding animals?” he asked, not for the first time.

“I don’t think anyone’s ever been able to break them to the saddle, Zebra,” Curly said. “I never heard of it anyway, and somebody must of tried it before now.”

Virgil carefully put his pictures away in his pockets. “Them foreigners don’t know nothin’ about riding zebras,” he said. “I’ll bet you could ride one, Curly. You can ride anything. And train them too. I wish you’d go with me. We could bring back enough to start a zebra ranch. Think of it, Curly! The only one in the country, maybe the only one in the world! People would come from everywhere just to see them zebras, and they’d pay money to ride them. We’d be rich and famous in no time!”

Curly kept his attention on his apple pie, scarcely listening. He had heard it all before and knew nothing would ever come of Zebra’s rosy dream. But Zebra was watching him and waiting for some reply, so he said, “Let me know when you get ready to go. By then I may be ready to go with you.”

Zebra’s eyes lit up like a child’s on Christmas eve. “Would you, Curly? You ain’t just trying to make me feel good?”

“I’ll think on it,” Curly said, as he finished his pie and washed it down with the last of his coffee.

“You do that, Curly,” Zebra said. “Don’t forget, now.”

Curly waved and headed for the door.

As he was leaving the restaurant he saw Uncle Willy going into the hotel, and he thought sourly, I bet old Darius won’t try to run him out. That was a funny thing about Uncle Willy. Almost everyone laughed at him behind his back, but everyone respected him to his face, except for his own ungrateful hands. Most people around here knew that if it wasn’t for him there would be no town. If he did pull out, Boot Hill would become a ghost town overnight, for without the Lazy G, the town would have no reason to exist. So the smug townspeople did their grinning behind his back.

Then it occurred to the rustler that Uncle Willy might have gone to the hotel to see Ringo. Uncle Willy was a sly old fox, and not the fool a lot of people thought him. And Curly suddenly remembered the old rumors that Ringo was secretly working for the Earps when he had ridden with Curly and the Clantons.

“Say, Curly, do you know that tall fellow who rode in on that black horse?” the boy asked. “Looked like a gunfighter, didn’t he?”

Curly wanted to tell him, in the most casual and offhand way, that it was Johnny Ringo. But Johnny Ringo wouldn’t like that, so Curly did the next best thing, and said in the most casual and offhand way, “Fellow calls hisself Easter.”

Billy “the Kid” Bishop’s eyes and mouth popped wide open. Like everyone else, he had heard about the gunfight over in Silver City. “Easter! You sure, Curly?”

Curly shrugged. “That’s the name he signed in the register.”

There was a strange glow in the boy’s eyes. “Some folks think Easter is really Billy the Kid. The Kid was from Silver City. You think he could still be alive, Curly?”

“Sure,” Curly said, grinning. “You’re Billy the Kid.”

The boy grinned sheepishly. “I mean the real Billy the Kid. Bonney. Not Bishop.”

“Don’t tell me he’s still alive, too.”

“You don’t think Easter could be him, then?”

“It ain’t likely, seeing as how Pat Garret blasted the Kid with his cannon two or three years back. Besides, Bonney was a sawed-off little runt with buckteeth.”

The Bishop kid put his hand over his mouth. He had one tooth that suck out a little more than the others. “You never told me you knew the Kid, Curly.”

“Forgot to mention it, I guess,” Curly said easily. “I rode with him for a while in ‘78, using another name.” In fact Curly had never even seen the Kid, but he had begun to believe the lies he told, although hardly anyone else did. “But I was only kidding you about Easter. I just gave him that name as a sort of joke, and it looks like he took a liking to it.” He grinned to himself and added, “Prob’ly just some dude who wears his gun for show.”

The kid also grinned, though he looked a little disappointed. “You gonna get in trouble doing that, Curly. Mad Dog Shorty said he was gonna kill you for giving him that bad name.”

“Mad Dog Shorty better bring plenty of help,” Curly said, as he stepped astride the eager Appaloosa. “And I don’t mean just Pike and them.”

The Bishop kid came a little closer, looking up at him. “Say, Curly, when you gonna teach me how to shoot? You keep saying you will, but you never get around to it.”

“Yeah, it looks like I’ve done waited too long,” Curly said, glancing down at the gun the boy always wore, even when he was cleaning out the stalls. “From what I hear, you’ve done gone and learned how all by yourself.”

There was a kind of pride in the boy’s grin. “I’ve been practicing every chance I get. But I don’t guess I’ll ever be as good as you, Curly.”

“You never know,” Curly said generously. “You keep at it long enough, you might come in a close second.”

“What about Ringo?” the boy asked, for he had often heard Curly talk about Ringo’s magic with a Colt. “You think I’ll ever be as good as him?”

“Nobody’s as good as Ringo,” Curly said. “They don’t make them like that anymore. Doc Holliday is supposed to be about the deadliest man with a gun in the West and when he was in Tombstone everyone was afraid of him except Ringo. Two or three times Ringo invited him to draw, but some of the Earp crowd always arrived in time to stop it and old Doc looked real pleased to see them.”

He saw the dreamy look in the boy’s eyes and knew he was seeing himself as a famous gunfighter, the equal of Ringo and Earp and Holliday and Curly Bill. That boy knew old Curly was right up there with Ringo and them, and that modesty alone kept him from saying so.

Curly raised his hand in a little salute and rode up the street. At the general store he swung down, tied the Appaloosa and went in.

“You got that stuff ready?”

“Sure thing, Curly.” Grady nodded at a half-filled flour sack on the counter. “Put it on your bill, like always.”

Curly nodded and studied the storekeeper’s blank shriveled face, “Did Uncle Willy manage to sell you his half of the store?”

Grady shook his head. “He looked like he had something on his mind, but he didn’t say what it was.”

That was just like Uncle Willy, Curly thought. He had to think about a thing a good long while and change his mind several times before he made a final decision.

“He say anything to you about it?” Grady asked.

“Nothing much. Just that he might see if you were interested. I doubt if he really wants to sell.”

Grady smiled. “I sort of doubt it myself.”

At the hitchrail Curly tied the grub sack to the horn and then stepped into the saddle.

“Hey, Curly!”

He turned his head and saw the three Hatcher boys standing in front of the Bent Elbow. He walked the Appaloosa across the dust and reined in, watching them in stony silence, thinking what poor specimens they were compared to Ringo. He would have traded all three of them and a dozen more like them for one like Ringo.

“That grub you got there, Curly?” Beanbelly asked, grinning. In the sunlight he looked even more sloppy and seedy. His clothes were baggy and dirty, his face darkened by a patchy stubble. He jerked his shaggy head toward the west. “The shack’s that way.”

“I thought I’d take a bite of grub out to the ranch,” Curly said. “You boys would just let your old ma and pa starve, and think nothing of it.”

“Hell, the old man could ride in to get some stuff,” Cash said, the other two merely shrugging their indifference.

“You know he’s afraid to get near a saloon. The temptation might be too much for him.”

But they weren’t listening. They had something else on their minds. Cash told him what it was. “This would be a good time to round up a bunch of cows, while Uncle Willy’s in town.”

“Let’s give Uncle Willy’s cows a rest,” Curly said. “We’ve hazed them back and forth across the border so much there ain’t no meat left on them.”

Beanbelly grinned and Comanche Joe laughed his short laugh, which sounded more like a grunt and was about the only sound he ever made. Cash seemed inclined to argue, but then he only shrugged and silently watched Curly ride up the street.

At the edge of town Curly put the Appaloosa into a gallop and thundered along the winding road through the desert chaparral, leaning a little forward in the saddle, his white teeth bared in a reckless grin. Ah, it was good to be young, with the sun and wind on his face, a strong spirited horse between his legs, and the whole wild West for a bridle path.

The desert raced by him unnoticed, for he had seen it too many times and now saw only himself tearing across it on that beautiful white horse with the streaming black mane and tail. In the distance ahead there were rough, rocky hills slashed and scarred by twisting canyons and arroyos, and beyond them barren mountains that looked like great heaps of ashes spilled on the desert. It was a hard wild land, crisscrossed by rattlesnakes, scalp-hungry Apaches, Mexican smugglers, white renegades, and other varmints, all doing their best to preserve the balance of nature at everyone else’s expense. But although there were times when he hated it, most of the time he loved it. He loved every rock and stunted shrub. He loved the clear clean air, the cloudless blue sky, the hot sun and the dry wind. He loved it all because he was a part of it, and knew this was where he belonged.

Then he saw the dust ahead and remembered that it was a very dangerous country to travel alone. Apaches were what he thought of first. But Apaches didn’t raise clouds of dust and they didn’t travel the white man’s road, except when being marched from one reservation to another. He slowed the Appaloosa to a prancing trot and soon halted in the road facing six of the meanest white men in the West.

There was wall-eyed Pike Lefferts and his brother Bear, both big, black-bearded men in their forties. The others, spread out in the road behind them, were all younger men by several years, but every bit as ugly and hard-looking. There was Scar-face Harry, who had once fancied himself an explosives expert. The last bank job had literally blown up in his face, and he hadn’t heard much since except a funny ringing in his ears. Beside him was Rattlesnake Sam, who had a peculiar way of holding his small head like a rattler about to strike. Sticky-fingered Dave was a slight blond fellow with a sheepish grin and gleaming pale eyes that ranged over Curly’s new brown suit and paused on the wide cartridge belt and the walnut-butted .45’s in the tied-down holsters. Mad Dog Shorty was a small funny looking man in a baggy old suit and a derby, with the stub of a cigar clenched between his wide-spaced little teeth. His face twitched when Curly grinned at him, and he rode his horse up abreast of Pike and Bear and sat there bent forward in his saddle peering at Curly with wild hatred swimming in his half-crazed watery eyes.

“Morning, boys,” Curly said cheerfully. “You’re just in time for the funeral.”

Pike squinted at him with one small sharp eye, while the other one, wide open and alarmed, seemed to be looking past him down the road toward town. “What funeral?”