The Regulators (27 page)

LAINE

Come on, Cap'n. I done saved you the nicest tent in the bivouac. Wait'll you see it.

He shoves the dazed and defeated
CANDY
toward the jail,
SHERIFF STREETER
is watching them go with a grin, and does not at first see the batwing doors of the Lady Bay Saloon open as
MAJOR MURDOCK
pushes out onto the sidewalk. For once,
MURDOCK'S
trademark grin is gone
.

SCENE CONTINUES

MURDOCK

You think puttin' Candy in jail's gonna solve your problems, Sheriff?

STREETER
turns toward him.
MURDOCK
pulls his mud-splattered cavalry duster back, freeing the butt of his Army-issue Colt.

STREETER
(
smiles
)

Could be I just arrested my first ghost. Where are the rest of your regulators holed up? Desatoya Canyon? Skate Rock? You ready to tell me yet?

MURDOCK

You're crazy as a snakebit varmit!

STREETER

That so? Well, we'll see. I'm guessing there won't be any ghosts riding tonight without Captain Candell to hand out the sheets.

Still smiling,
STREETER
turns toward the jail again
.

SCENE CONTINUES

MURDOCK

Suppose I told you the regulators were a lot closer than Desatoya Mountain or Skate Rock? Suppose I told you they were right outside of town, just waitin' for the first gunshot? How would you like that, you damn Yankee?

STREETER

I think I'd like it just fine.

He looks up, raises his fingers to his mouth, and whistles.

EXT.  MAIN STREET ROOFTOPS, STREET POV

MEN
start appearing from behind every sign, chimney, and false front. Formerly terrified
TOWNSMEN
,
now looking grim and carrying rifles. They're on the Chinese laundry, the Owl County Store, Worrell's Mercantile, even Craven's Undertaking Parlors. Among them we see
PREACHER YEOMAN
and
LAWYER BRADLEY. YEOMAN
, no longer concerned that the regulators are a supernatural visitation meant to punish the town for its sins raises one hand to the
SHERIFF
in a salute.

SCENE CONTINUES

RESUME MAIN STREET, WITH STREETER AND MURDOCK

STREETER
returns
YEOMAN'S
salute with a flick of his hand, then turns back to
MURDOCK,
who looks furious and confused. A dangerous combination!

STREETER

Yep, bring 'em on, if that's your pleasure.

MURDOCK'S
face tightens. He drops his hand until it hovers just above the butt of his Colt. Neither of them sees
LAURA
push her way out of the saloon from behind
murdock
. She's wearing one of her spangly outfits and carrying her
derringer
.

MURDOCK

You want to try me, Sheriff?

STREETER

Why don't we just stand down? Think this thing over?

But he knows it's too late, he's pushed
MURDOCK
too far.
STREETER
drops his own hand to just above the butt of his gun,

MURDOCK

Time for talking's done, Sheriff.

   
SCENE CONTINUES

STREETER

Wellnow, if that's the way you want it.

MURDOCK

You could have stood aside and nobody would have got hurt.

STREETER

That's not the way we do things around here. We—(sees
LAURA
)

STREETER

Laura, no!

While he's distracted,
MURDOCK GOES FOR HIS GUN. LAURA
darts between the two men, pointing the
DERRINGER
at
MURDOCK
. She pulls the trigger, but there's only a
CLICK. MISFIRE
!
A split second later,
MURDOCK
fires his cavalry Colt, and the bullet meant for
STREETER
hits
LAURA
instead. She
CRUMPLES.

EXT.  ROOFTOPS

The
TOWNSMEN
raise their guns to fire.

RESUME MAIN STREET IN FRONT OF THE SALOON

MURDOCK
sees what's about to happen and dives back through the batwings

SCENE CONTINUES

and info the relative safety of the lady Day,
STREETER
chases him with a couple of shots, then runs to
LAURA
and kneels beside her.

RESUME ROOFTOPS

FLIP MORAN
, the hostler, lets go with a round. A couple of others follow suit, but only a couple, luckily.

RESUME MAIN STREET IN FRONT OF THE SALOON

A
BULLET WHINES
off one of the batwing doors, knocking a splinter out.

STREETER

Don't shoot, he's gone!

RESUME ROOFTOPS

The men lower their guns.
FLIP MORAN
looks confused and ashamed of himself.

EXT.  STREETER AID LAURA, CLOSE

The
SHERIFF'S
hard shell is temporarily gone—smashed. He looks down at the
DYING DANCEHALL GIRL
and realizes he loves her!

STREETER

Laura!

SCENE CONTINUES

LAURA
(
coughing
)

Gun misfired . . . you always said . . . never trust . . . a hideout gun . . .

She breaks down coughing.

STREETER

Don't talk. I'll send Joe Prudum for the doc—

LAURA
(
coughing
)

Too . . . too late. Just hold me!

STREETER
does. She looks up at him
CURIOUSLY
.

LAURA

Why, Sheriff! . . . are you crying?

EXT.  REAR OF THE LADY DAY

MURDOCK
comes bursting out.
SERGEANT MATHIS
is still there, holding the horses.

SARGE

What happened? I heard shootin'!

MURDOCK
(
swings up on his horse
)

SCENE CONTINUES

Never mind. It's time to get the boys.

SARGE

You mean—?!

Suddenly
MURDOCK'S
insanity breaks free His eyes
BLAZE
.
His lips pull back in a snarl that looks almost like a grin. It is the grin of a cornered
ANIMAL
!

MURDOCK

We're gonna wipe this town off the map!

They wheel their horses away to join the rest of the regulators.

There was no need for Steve and Collie to hop the fence at the far end of Doc's yard; there was a gate, although they had to tear out a fair amount of well-entrenched ivy before they could use it. They exchanged words only twice before reaching the path. The first time it was Steve who spoke. He looked around at the trees—scrubby, weedy-looking things, for the most part, now mysterious with the rustle of rainwater dripping off the leaves—and then asked: “Are these poplars?”

Collie, who had been working his way around a particularly vicious clump of thornbushes, looked back at him. “Say what?”

“I asked if these trees are poplars. Since Poplar Street is where we came from, I just wondered.”

“Oh.” Collie looked around doubtfully, swapping the .30–.06 from one hand to the other and then
running an arm across his forehead. It was very hot in the greenbelt. “I don't know if they're poplars or pines or goddam eucalyptuses, to tell you the truth. Botany was never my thing. That one over there is a skinny-ass birch, and that's about all I know on the subject.” With that, he started off again.

Five minutes later (Steve wondering by now if there really
was
a path back here, or only wishful thinking), Collie stopped. He looked back past Steve, his eyes so intense that Steve himself turned to see what he was looking at. He saw nothing but the tangled greenery through which they had already made their way. No sign of Old Doc's house; the Jacksons', either. He could see a tiny wedge of red that he thought might be the chimney atop the Carver house, but that was all. They almost could have been a hundred miles from the nearest human habitation. Thinking that—and realizing it was a true thought—gave Steve a chill.

“What?” he asked, thinking the cop would ask him why they couldn't hear any cars, not even some kid's glasspack-equipped low-rider, or a single bass-powered sound-system, or a motorcycle, or a horn, or a shout, or
anything.

Instead, Collie said: “We're losing the light.”

“We can't be. It's only—” Steve looked at his watch, but it had stopped. The battery had given out, probably; he'd never replaced it since his sister had given it to him for Christmas a couple of years ago. It was odd, though, that it should have stopped just past four o'clock, which had to be not long after the
time he had first wheeled into this marvellous little neighborhood.

“Only what?”

“I can't say exactly, my watch has stopped, but just think about it. It
can't
be much more than five-thirty, five forty-five. Maybe even earlier. Don't they say you overestimate elapsed time when you're in a crisis situation?”

“I don't even know who ‘they' are, never have,” Collie said. “But look at the light. The
quality
of the light.”

Steve did, and yes, the cop had a point. Steve didn't like to admit it, but he did. The light slanted through the tangle (and that was the proper word for it, not greenbelt) in hot red shafts. Red sun at night, sailor's delight, he thought, and suddenly, as if that was a trigger, it all tried to crash in on him, all the things that were wrong, and he couldn't stand it. He raised his hands and clapped them over his eyes, whacking himself a damned good one on the side of the head with the butt of the .22 he was carrying, feeling his bladder go loose, knowing he was close to watering his underwear and not caring. He staggered backward and—from a distance, it seemed—heard Collie Entragian asking if he was okay. With what felt like the greatest effort of his life, Steve said that he was and forced himself to lower his hands, to look into that delirious red light again.

“Let me ask you a very personal question,” Steve said. He thought his voice did not sound even remotely like his own. “How scared are you?”

“Very.” The big guy armed more sweat off his forehead. It was very hot in here, but in spite of the dripping, rustling leaves, the heat felt strangely dry to Steve, not in the least greenhouse-ish. The smells were that way, too. Not unpleasant, but dry. Egyptian, almost. “Don't lose hope, though. I see the path, I think.”

It was indeed the path, they stepped onto it less than a minute after getting moving again, and Steve saw signs—comforting ones, under the circumstances—of the animals which had used this particular game-trail: a potato-chip bag, the wrapper from a pack of baseball cards, a couple of double-A batteries which had maybe been pried out of some kid's Walkman after they went dead, initials carved on a tree.

He saw something far less comforting on the other side of the track: a misshapen growth, prickly and virulent green, amid the sumac and scrub trees. Two more stood behind it, their lumpy arms sticking stiffly up like the arms of alien traffic cops.

“Holy shit, do you see those?” Steve asked.

Collie nodded. “They look like cactuses. Or cacti. Or whatever you say for more than one.”

Yes, Steve thought, but only in the way that women painted by Picasso during his Cubist phase looked like real women. The simplicity of the cactuses and their lack of symmetry—like the bird with the mismatched wings—gave them a surreal aspect that hurt his head. It was like looking at something that wouldn't quite come into focus.

It
does
look a little like a buzzard,
Old Doc had said.
As a child might draw it.

Things were starting to group together in his mind. Not
fit
together, at least not yet, but forming themselves naturally into what they had been taught to call a set back in Algebra I. The vans, which looked like props from a kids' Saturday matinee. The bird. Now these violent green cactuses, like something you'd see in an energetic first-grader's picture.

Collie approached the one closest to the path and stuck out a tentative finger.

“Man, don't do that, you're nuts!” Steve said.

Collie ignored him. Reached the finger farther. Closer. And closer yet, until—

“
Ouch!
You mother!”

Steve jumped. Collie yanked his hand back and peered at it like a kid with an interesting new scrape. Then he turned to Steve and held it out. A bead of blood, small and dark and perfect, was forming on the pad of his index finger. “They're real enough to poke,” he said. “This one is, anyway.”