The Big Gundown (18 page)

T
HEY REINED IN
at the Three Aces and dismounted stiffly. The cold had climbed down into their clothes and skin and settled into their bones and they tied off with stiff fingers and stepped up onto the walk, snow clinging to them like they were fence posts, and went in through the double doors. There were already puddles on the floor from others who'd come and gone that morning.

Presently there was just the barkeep leaning against the oak, reading a
Police Gazette
, sipping coffee. He had a gut and black handlebar moustaches and looked up with a tired expression when they came in.

“You boys sure are around early enough,” the barkeep said.

“We could stand some hot grub,” Dallas said, pulling off his gloves. Lon and Harvey and Taylor all drifted toward the big potbelly in the corner of the room. They rubbed their palms together and held them forth toward the hot metal. Perk stood alongside Dallas at the bar and said, “I'll take a whiskey to get started.”

The barkeep pulled a bottle down and poured a shot into a glass and looked at Dallas and said, “You want a shot, too?”

“Hell, this is a bar, right?”

“You got any grub in the back—maybe some leftover luncheon meat from yesterday?” Perk said.

“Ain't got nothing left over, waiting for the butcher to come around with something,” the barkeep said. “Try the Fat Duck Café up the street. That's where you'll find grub.”

The boys by the stove looked around when they heard Perk and Dallas ordering whiskey and Taylor came over to the bar and said, “I'll have one of those, too,” so the barkeep poured him out one and said to Perk and Dallas, “You all want another?” Perk pushed his glass toward the bottle and said, “Bears shit in the woods?” and the barkeep poured him another and poured Dallas one as well. “How about you boys?” the barkeep said, looking at Lon and Harvey, who were still standing in front of the stove.

“No,” Lon said, “my stomach's a little sour this morning.”

Harvey didn't say anything. He wasn't much of a talker.

“You seen the marshal around this morning?” Dallas said.

The barkeep shook his head. “No, just some old boys come in and had themselves a eye-opener.”

“He keep a place around here?”

“Hotel, far as I know.”

“You know which room?”

The barkeep shook his head and Taylor pushed his empty glass toward the bottle and said, “Pour me another.” The barkeep did and he and Perk and Dallas took their time with the second round because whiskey was dear to a man with near-empty pockets.

“You all drink up,” Dallas said, tossing back his, then took his gloves and pulled them back on again and
slapped his palms together. “Let's go get some grub.” Perk and Taylor threw back their drinks and followed Dallas back out again, along with Lon and Harvey falling in behind.

The sun was risen high enough now that it fractured off the crystalline snow the wind had kicked up and it caused them to duck their heads low as they walked up the street to the café. They entered and there were but a few customers still there—most having eaten already and gone—the early risers and those who could afford to pay for a meal instead of eating something at home.

“Let's sit by that window, so we can keep an eye on the street,” Dallas said. There was only one table directly in front of the window and it was occupied by an old man dipping slices of bread in his coffee and thinking about something in his long ago past because he didn't seem to pay any attention to them when they approached his table.

“Why don't you move to another table,” Dallas said.

The old man looked up at them with eyes gray as flannel.

“To hell you say.”

“Go on, dad.”

He looked at all five of them, then slowly stood and took his plate and cup and wandered off to another table farther back because when you're in the shape he was in, you didn't pitch into a bunch of young hands looking for a fight. He had had so many fights in his lifetime he couldn't remember them all. But what he did remember was how much getting into a fight hurt and how nothing good ever came out of a fight whether you won or lost, except maybe your reputation if you won.

Dallas sat down first, then Perk took up the seat next to him. Then Lon, Harvey, and Taylor all settled into chairs.

“You figured it out yet?” Lon said. “What we're gone do and how and when?”

Dallas looked at him like he couldn't believe the third man down on the string would ask such a question.

The waitress came with a tray of coffee cups and a pot and set them down and they all watched her while she did and she felt her skin burning from the way they were staring at her. She knew Dallas and that ugly Perk by reputation, but the others she only knew slightly from seeing them in town on occasion. They wore rough clothes and old stained hats and long kerchiefs around their necks and heavy coats. She didn't like the way they stared at her, but there wasn't anything she could do about it.

“What can I get you gents to eat?” she said.

They ordered eggs and hash, biscuits and honey, and she walked back to the kitchen knowing they were still watching her and it wouldn't take any sort of genius to figure out what they were thinking.

“We're gone get some grub in us and drink a little and if that son of a bitch happens to come walking in while we're doing it, we'll settle his hash here and now,” Dallas said, answering Lon's question.

“And if he don't come in?” Taylor said, undoing the buttons of his coat.

“If he don't, we'll go pay him a visit over to the hotel where that barkeep said he stays.”

“Then what? After we take care of this business?”

Dallas leaned in close to speak to them and they all leaned in close to listen.

“Perk and me has come up with a plan.”

“What's that?” Taylor said. He had drops of coffee dew in his moustaches.

“We're gone rob that bank they got here, the one that the boss says he keeps all his money in.”

He waited to see their reaction. None of them said anything. He looked at Perk, who said, “You boys ain't weak sisters, are you?”

Taylor straightened and said, “No, we sure as hell ain't, are you?”

Perk looked at him with those funny eyes and Taylor chose one to stare back at.

“You-all keep a watch on the street, in case you see that lawman,” Dallas said. He could see they were thinking it over, about robbing the bank. He didn't know if any one of them, except Perk maybe, had ever broken the law or not. Well, they'd soon enough find out.

“Make me a shuck, Perk.”

Perk took out his makings and rolled a cigarette and handed it to Dallas, then rolled himself one while they waited for their grub to arrive. And when it did, they set to eating like a pack of dogs because their feelings were running high from burning down the boss's bunkhouse and quitting on him and all the uncertainty about their futures and whatever it was they were set to do they were set to do it in a hurry, eating included.
Winter is a tough time to quit a job unless you got another waiting for you
, Harvey, the silent one, thought as he ate his eggs and hash.
I don't know about robbing no damn bank.
But he didn't say anything. He guessed whatever the others were up for doing, he'd go along with because he didn't know what else there was to do.
Was it spring or summer when a man might catch on with another cow outfit, I might just tell 'em all to go to hell and get on my own way, but things are tight and a man has to stick with his own kind in times of trouble.

They ate, scraping their forks off their plates and watching the street in between, then sopping up the leavings with warm biscuits covered in honey. Taylor licked his fingers when he finished what was on his plate and looked around like maybe something else was coming, then rubbed the tip of his nose with the back of his wrist.

The waitress came over and set their bill on the table and nobody reached for it until finally Dallas picked it up and said, “This one's on me, boys.”

He'd taken the trouble to peel off a few dollars from what he'd stolen back at Bob Parker's place and put it in a separate pocket on the trip to town without any of them seeing and he reached in and took out the spare money now and held up the bill, looking at it, then laid several dollars there on the table.

Perk said, “You gone leave that gal a tip?”

Dallas looked at him.

“Tip for what, she'd just doing her job, is all.”

Lon dug around in his pocket and found a liberty-head dime and set it beside his plate and said, “I'll leave her a little something.”

Then they sipped what was left in their coffee cups and set them down again and buttoned their coats and Dallas said, “Well, let's go get this done.”

 

Gus Boone had seen them when they came out of the saloon and crossed the street to go into the café. He'd been talking to Will Bird in front of the barbershop. Will was telling him how he helped Tall John dig a grave and bury Ellis Kansas the day before.

“Clear into the evening we dug,” Will was saying. “We was still digging when it got dark, that damn
ground hard as iron, so's we had to use picks and I broke the handle on mine and had to go get another and finally we got it dug and here it is dark and beyond and my hands about so sore I can't hardly unbutton my fly to take a leak—”

“Lord, look what the cat's gone and dragged in,” Gus said when he saw the boys crossing the street to the café.

Will looked around and saw them, too, and said, “You gone go tell the marshal?”

“Damn right. They dint just come in to eat, not on a Monday morning when they should be working. You better go let others know there's gone be a fight this morning and to keep the women and kids off the streets.”

Will stood there, squinting against the sun and blowing snow. Seemed an awful day for a fight, cold and wintry as it was. But then blood only knew blood and death didn't know when to quit and all he could think was he didn't want to dig any more graves soon, his hands sore as they were and maybe he ought to go and get the waitress and make sure she was safe. He was pretty sure by now he was in love for the first time and he'd hate for anything to happen that would get in the way of all that. Should he go and make sure she was safe then tell the others, or tell the others then find Fannie? He was a little bit confused about what he should do exactly, and just stood there watching as those Double Bar boys came marching out of the café again.

Finally he turned and went up the street in a hurry and began telling everyone he encountered about what was happening and they should get off the streets unless they wanted to get shot, his voice becoming more high-pitched as he went.

 

Clara sat in stony silence as the girls watched her without speaking. Then she heard the tiny bell ringing from the other room and rose and went back to the infirmary.

“Wonder if you could tell me what you did with my clothes,” Willy said.

“I cleaned them and they are hanging in the closet.”

He looked around, then said, “Ma'am, I need to thank you for your kindness.”

“You're welcome,” she said.

“I had me some bad nightmares,” Willy said. “Some things come to me and made me realize some things.”

She didn't know what he was talking about and he didn't seem to want to explain it any further than that. She could only think about Jake as it was, and not about what this boy's problems were or were not.

“I just mean to say, I probably didn't show any gratitude toward you for helping me out here is all,” Willy said. “I got to get on now, though.”

“I don't believe you should try and go very far just yet,” she said. “Jake…”

“You mean that feller who took care of me?”

“He saved your life,” she said.

“I don't know why the hell he did. It sure ain't worth saving, far as I can see.”

“It's his nature,” she said, “even if it isn't yours.”

He looked at her quizzically, then said, “Ma'am, you don't mind, I'd just like to get dressed now.”

She nodded and turned and went out of the room and back into the parlor, where the girls still sat stiffly upon the divan.

“Mama,” they said when she entered.

“Come here to me,” she said.

They came to her and she wrapped her arms around
them and drew them close and wept and in a little while they heard the back door open and then close again and they could see through the window the man limping through the snow.

J
AKE ANSWERED THE KNOCK.
He half-expected it.

Gus stood there, his nose red, dripping snot.

“They're here,” he said.

“Where are they?”

“Over to the café.”

“Okay, thanks.”

“What you gone do, Marshal?”

“I don't know.”

“You still got time to get the hell out. I could go and get you a horse and tie it up around back. Wouldn't nobody blame you.”

“No.”

“You know the day old Toussaint Trueblood found you and brought you here, you were all shot to pieces. You remember what it was like? You sure you want to go through all that again, only this time worse?”

“I'm not sure of anything, Gus. You want to walk over to the café with me and confront those men?”

Gus licked his lips.

“You know if I could shoot worth a damn, I'd be right there with you, don't you?”

“I know you would. Go on, Gus, get off the streets before things get started.”

“Jesus, Marshal, you don't know how bad I feel about all this.”

“It's okay.”

Gus continued to stand there until Jake said again, “Go on, Gus. Things will work out the way they're meant to.”

Gus turned and hurried off down the hall and Jake saw him turn and go down the stairs, then he closed the door and went to the closet and opened it and saw the new suit hanging there—the one he'd bought a month before, before all the trouble began with the Double Bar boys. He wasn't sure at the time why he bought it, other than his past dictated that a man should always have at least one good suit of clothes for special occasions. He used to have a wardrobe full of good suits in his former life. So he ordered it from Otis, who took his measurements and a down payment and said, “I'll send the order off today and the suit should be here in two weeks.”

And when the suit arrived Otis said, “Aren't you going to try it on to make sure it fits?” Jake said he would wait until a special occasion arose for him to wear it, that he was confident in Otis's ability to measure. It was cut from a fine black broadcloth and he'd ordered two white shirts with it. He now took the suit and laid it on the bed and looked at it, then changed out of his work clothes into it, putting on one of the white shirts and then the trousers then the jacket. He buttoned the shirt up all the way to the throat and stood before the mirror to have a look at himself. He looked just like a corpse.

He set his hat on his head, then took the pistols and
stuck them down inside the wide leather belt he had fastened around his waist.

“Time to go to the party,” he said, then went on out and closed the door behind him. He wouldn't make it easy for them. He'd take as many with him as would go. They might not get whipped, but they'd least know they'd been in a fight. He went out the back door. Stepping out onto the landing, he could see over the roofs of the other buildings in town. The back stairs were snow-covered, had not been cleaned nor the snow melted off. A brisk wind, sharp as a knife, blew in off the grasslands, cutting down the street and whipping up the loose powdery snow as it went. Little fine gusts of snow like blown sand stung his face as he made his way down the stairs, careful not to slip and fall. Be a hell of a thing if I fell and broke my leg and they just came up and shot me like a horse, he thought.

The stair emptied out into an alley that ran between the but cher shop and the hotel. It came to a dead end at the back of the buildings, where a tall wood fence ran. The other way led to the street. He went up it and paused at the corner, looking around quickly to check the street. He saw them coming out of the café, two and two, with one trailing behind. Dallas and Perk in front, the others, whose names he did not know, falling in behind. They were coming up toward the hotel, their heads down because of the sting of wind-whipped snow. He ducked back, drew one of the pistols, and waited.

 

They reached the front of the hotel.

“One of you wait out here case he ain't inside. Lon, why don't you go around back case he tries coming out
that way. Perk, you and me and Taylor will go in and see can't we just finish this business inside.”

Lon said, “Why don't you send one of the others around back?”

“'Cause I'm sending you, goddamn it.”

“Okay then, but don't expect me to stand out there all day freezing my ass off.”

“It won't be all day, now, go on.”

 

Jake could hear the shuffle of a man's boots coming in his direction. He pressed himself against the wall of the hotel and waited with his gun at the ready. When the man came around the corner, Jake brought the pistol down hard over his head. Lon staggered, then sank to his knees and Jake hit him again and he toppled over and fell into the snow, his hat all caved.

Jake dragged him farther back into the alley and laid him up against the wood fence, then unfastened the man's belt and jerked it free and used it to tie his hands behind his back and left him lying on his side, making sure his face wasn't buried in the snow. Then he stood, breathing hard from the effort and the tension. By now he figured the ones who went inside would be upstairs already and it wouldn't be but another moment before they discovered he wasn't in the room.

He moved quickly back to the head of the alley and glanced around the corner at the one standing out front. He had a pistol in his hand and was standing there, shifting his weight from foot to foot—nervous or cold. There was a wagon parked just to Jake's left on the street and if he could slip around to the other side he'd have a clear shot at the man in front. The man looked up at the upper windows, as though there was something there to interest him, then he glanced off down the street in the other di
rection and when he did, Jake stepped out and went around behind the wagon.

The man didn't bother to turn and look back toward the alley and Jake called to him: “Hey!”

Harvey had been standing there, thinking he didn't care for it much—taking orders from Dallas, being left to stand guard out in the cold like some dog or something. It made him edgy, this business, all of it. He didn't mind killing so much as he minded being told what to do. Who was Dallas Fry, any way, to tell him what to do? Then, too, it was cold and his feet were cold down inside his boots and the sun didn't seem to have no strength to it and what the hell was taking them so long inside, anyway? It was just one man and three of them. Then he heard somebody shout, “Hey!” and he turned to see who it was, thinking it was Lon coming back out of the alley. But when he turned he saw the lawman aiming his gun at him.

“Shit!” It was about the first word he'd spoken in a day and a half and he raised up the pistol in his hand and fired without even giving it a thought and didn't hear the lawman firing his own gun the first time. Between them they fired off four or five shots and it was like a goddamn bad dream or something, he told himself, like his bullets couldn't kill nothing and the other man's bullets couldn't kill him, either.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Then something flat and hard hit him dead center and knocked him backward as if he'd been hit with the head end of a shovel. And right away it snatched his breath out of him and he tried to swallow in more air, but it wasn't doing much good. Down he went and he dropped his gun and lost it somewhere in the snow and was reaching around for it, trying to find it. He saw red drops in the snow, then saw it was his own blood dripping out of him
like water dripping from a bad pumphead. Bright and red and wet drops about the size of half dollars at first and he could feel his throat squeezing shut like someone had their hands around his neck, choking him.

Then he just felt like laying down right there and letting go because suddenly he had no strength, and that is what he did. He just lay out flat in the snow and let whatever it was have its way, and the world that was in his head went rushing out and a blackness came rushing in. He tried one more time coughing out whatever it was felt caught in him, then closed his eyes and said to himself,
Well, that's it, then…

 

Jake saw the cotton batting fly out from the front of the man's coat, then watched helplessly as the man fell and groveled in the snow for a few moments before stretching out straight facedown, then lay still.

There had been other witnesses to the shooting death of the hired hand. They watched from behind plate-glass windows, the first shots attracting their attention. Gus was standing inside the barbershop, him and Carl, the barber, and Will Bird. And from inside the café, the waitress and the folks still there eating their breakfast had been drawn to the window and could watch the scene unfold slantways down the street. Otis Dollar had seen it from his store window, too, looking up the street in the opposite direction, and so had the dentist and his patient, a man with a rotted wisdom tooth, and the lawyer and all the others who had turned Jake down in the fight they knew was coming.

Clara was sitting at her table when she heard the shots. Each one caused her hands to shake so terribly she spilled the coffee in her cup. The girls sat across from her with frightened looks on their faces.

“Mama! Mama!”

Gus said, “Well, he just killed old Harvey.”

Will Bird said, “God
damn
I guess he did.”

“Yeah, but he's still got them others,” Carl said. “I'm betting he don't kill them all before they kill him.”

 

Dallas and the others had kicked in the door to Jake's room, rushing in with guns drawn, and were standing there, looking at old clothes on a bed, when they heard the shots. They rushed to the window overlooking the street in time to see Harvey flop in the snow and the lawman who shot him rise up from behind the wagon, his smoking gun still in his hand.

“God
damn
,” Perk said, “he killed Harv.”

Dallas smashed the glass and fired through the window and so did Perk. There wasn't enough room for Taylor to join in, so he just stood behind them, trying to see.

The shots splintered wood from the sideboards of the wagon. Jake looked up in time to see where the shots were coming from and something scored his cheek hot and stinging as a branding iron. He stood no chance if he remained where he was. He turned and ran across the street, the whiz and whistle of bullets flying all around him, blood dripping from his face where the bullet had grazed him.

“Let's go!” Dallas shouted.

The three of them ran out the room and into the hallway. That's when the kid, Frisco, pulled the trigger on his dad's old gun, spending the ten-cent shell he'd bought at Otis's store along with some honey for Marybeth to put on her teat. The bullet caught Taylor in the arm and knocked him ass over heels, causing the others to stumble.

“Son of a bitch, I'm shot!” he cried.

Dallas spun around and pulled the trigger and his bullet tore out plaster and wallpaper on the wall near where the
kid stood, just as a hand reached out from the open door and pulled the boy inside and slammed the door shut.

“Why that little peckerwood,” Taylor cried. “What the hell he shoot me for?”

“He wasn't aiming to shoot you,” Dallas said. “He was aiming to shoot me.”

“What the hell you grinning at?”

“Nothing,” Dallas said, begrudging the boy a small amount of respect. “Get off your lazy ass and let's go.”

Taylor pulled off his coat and saw the kid's bullet had gone right into where he'd patched the sleeve on his shirt. When he pulled the torn sleeve open, he saw red bloody meat right above the elbow. It stung like somebody had a pair of pliers pinching on it and his fingers had turned numb. The others were running down the hall, turning the corner and going down the stairs by the time he got to his feet.

“Little bastard!”

 

Sam Toe heard the shots, as he was shoeing one of the horses that pulled the funeral wagon for Tall John. He had a mouthful of nails and had been idly thinking about Rowdy Jeff, his old partner, the one he had the nightmarish dreams about from that summer the two of them spent alone in high country, tending a sheep camp.
I don't know why I keep thinking about him
, he told himself.
I don't know what there is about it that keeps me going back to that time
. It had plagued him so much he'd been drinking heavily and letting his work slip and now he had these two hearse-pulling horses the undertaker needed shoeing and had had them for a week almost already and just getting around to shoeing the one this morning.

“What the damn hell?” he mumbled. He dropped
down the freshly shod foot of the horse and stood up and saw the marshal running down the street toward him. He spit out the nails.

“What's going on, Marshal?”

“Better clear out,” Jake said.

“I don't see myself being run out of own place.”

“This is where I'm going to make my stand. You can stay if you want to.”

With a snoot full of whiskey, his mind troubled over his strange thoughts about Rowdy Jeff, his work all getting behind, his payments to the bank late on a business he was losing money on every single day, Sam Toe wasn't at all sure what he should do.

Then two shots rang out and Tall John's funeral horse fell dead. It sounded like something smacking leather when the horse was shot. It just fell dead and Sam Toe ducked and said, “Jeez Christ!” and ran through the livery and out the back and kept going with nothing to impede his progress—just a field of snow, deep in some places and less so in others, for as far as the eye could wander. He knew there wasn't a man alive could outrun a bullet, but he sure as hell was going to try.

Jake turned and fired at the three running figures, then ducked back into the darkened interior of the livery. There were lots of places a man could hide, shield himself—stalls mostly—but for how long was anyone's guess.