Through the afternoon, several customers came and went, but no one resembling Arch Powell arrived. Toward evening, two men rode up to the hitching rail and dismounted. Their indistinct figures sent a mild flutter through Clay’s heart, the instinctive warning of danger. He was prepared, had surreptitiously tipped most of his drinks from the bottle into the spittoon by his ankles. He watched through the window as the two men ran their eyes over his animals. They would probably demand to examine his packs more closely, but Clay was prepared for that eventuality also; he had burned every single outlaw flier in his possession many miles back along the trail to Killdeer.
The men entered and went to the bar. Clay was only slightly disappointed to see that neither was Arch Powell. Powell was being cautious, sending his men to sniff out a trap. Clay raised his glass to them, a gesture they pretended to ignore. They drank, speaking together softly, then approached Clay’s table. Clay hooked out two chairs with his boots. “Sit yourselves,” he said, smiling.
The men sat down. “Thank you,” said the first.
“Buy you a drink?” offered the second.
“Got plenty right here,” said Clay.
“Mort says you’re looking for someone.”
“That the barkeep? Well, he told no lies, gentlemen. Looking for someone’s my business here.”
“Mort says the feller you want, he’s not here.”
“Is that so. Maybe you two can direct me to where he’s at, and we can all share a drink.”
“Depends on the name,” said the second man.
“Arch Powell.”
“Not his. Yours.”
“Well, what I told Mort was Ham Deidsheimer.”
“And what’re you telling us?”
It was unclear if one or both men knew Deidsheimer by sight, so Clay smiled even more broadly and said, “Tell him Bill Adams, and I’m ready to work.”
“What kind of work would that be?”
“High-risk, high-paid work, the kind me and Ham got caught up in just recent, only Ham got the risk end of things, which was real unfortunate.”
“Telling us Ham’s dead, mister?”
“Afraid so.”
“Never heard about it, but I guess you can back up what you say.”
“Well, now, newspaper stories about the incident, that’d be a foolish thing for me to carry around, don’t you think? But I’ll show you something better.”
Clay produced from his vest a chain and a watch fob in the shape of a horseshoe. He had taken it from Ham Deidsheimer. The two men stared at it as Mort’s woman began lighting the lamps. Clay saw blankness disguising puzzlement in their faces. Neither one recognized the horseshoe fob. Clay turned it over to show them Ham’s name engraved on the back, and the motto Tempis fugit. They examined it closely, and returned it to him. Clay could tell that they had no clear idea what to do or say next, and he began to suspect the situation was not as he had thought.
“Come on, then,” he was told.
The first man stood, followed by the second. Clay picked up his bottle and went with them to the door. All three mounted their horses and began riding out of Killdeer. Clay’s escorts left the trail a mile from town and began threading their way in single file through the trees. Moonlight shone down on them, picking out the metal buttons sewn on the first man’s hatband. Clay was alert, pretending on occasion to swig from his bottle. When the leader stopped in a small clearing, Clay knew he was about to be interrogated. The appearance of pistols in the hands of both men did not surprise him. He grinned all the wider and tipped the bottle again, wetting his lips.
“Now, do I mistake your intentions, or are you fellers about to bushwhack me?”
“Get down and shuck that coat, mister, and don’t think to grab for that sawed-off.”
Clay dismounted and shrugged off his long coat.
“Ease it off,” he was told. Clay’s shotgun was detached from its shoulder harness and laid carefully on the ground.
“All right, now, you tell us some things we might like to know. You can start off with your real name. Bill Adams, that’s not it.”
“You seem mighty sure about that, and you two haven’t done me the courtesy of tossing a single name in my direction. That’s discourteous, and I believe I’ll lock my lip till you mend your ways.”
The second man got down from his horse and went directly to Clay. Avoiding his partner’s line of fire, he punched Clay hard in the stomach. Clay buckled, clutching himself, exaggerating the blow’s effect. He was hit again, and began slowly to sag. Moving in for another punch, the second man thought Clay’s clumsy lurching toward him was some kind of plea to stop, and was not prepared for the grabbing motion that plucked his gun from its holster, or the sudden smack of its cylinder alongside his jawbone. The barrel was against his windpipe before he could react, the hammer already cocked. He was between Clay and the first man, whose gun was leveled at them both. The first man hesitated. The standoff continued for several seconds while Clay recovered his breath.
“Now what?” said the first man.
“I’ll have those names,” Clay said, but none were offered. The man against whose throat he held a gun suddenly spun sideways, yelling, “Get him …!”
Clay and the man on horseback fired simultaneously. Clay felt a bullet pass by his neck, and fired again before seeing the first man begin to topple from his rearing horse. Clay couldn’t tell if he had hit him, or if the horse had thrown him. The second man was running. Clay’s skill with a pistol being minimal, he dropped it and grabbed for the shotgun at his feet. The running man was shot in the back at a distance of just a few yards. Clay went to the first man, lying still on the ground. This one was alive, without any wound that Clay could see in the moonlight, so it was probably the fall from his horse that had stunned him.
Clay kicked him in the hip. “Get up.”
The man slowly recovered his senses, aided by Clay’s boot, and sat up, then vomited. “Your name,” Clay said.
“Beecher … Willis Beecher …”
“And the other one?”
“Lee Hoyt …”
He vomited again. Clay had heard those names before, and reviewed in his memory the hundreds of fliers he had studied in the course of his work. Beecher wiped his mouth and stood. Clay kept the shotgun trained on him as Beecher looked across at the body of Hoyt.
“Kill him?” Clay was asked.
“I expect.”
“Then you’re in deep trouble, Adams, or whoever you are. May as well give me your real name right now.”
“What trouble?”
“The biggest kind, mister. You just killed a United States marshal.”
Clay heard a roaring in his ears, and felt momentarily faint. Now he remembered where he had come across the names—in a Denver newspaper detailing the embarrassment of the two federal marshals who had allowed Panther Stalking and Kills With a Smile to escape a month or more ago in New Mexico.
“You both should have told me before,” he said.
“Tell you what, mister! For all we knew, you were some partner to Archie Powell! Are you telling me now you aren’t? Just who the hell are you?”
“Bill Adams. I wouldn’t have shot him if I’d known.”
“You’re a bounty man, am I right? Looking to get Powell? You’re too late, Adams. He was shot nine days back. Hoyt and me were up here trying to get the rest of Powell’s bunch, hiding out hereabouts.”
“The barkeep in town, he knows?”
“He’s our man. Soon as you told him you’re looking for Powell, he sent for us.”
“I’m sorry about your partner. He never should have jumped like that.”
“You bounty hunters are liable to mess up whatever you touch. You’re a fool to think you can do what the law can’t.”
“Seems I can recall a couple of laws who let a couple of Apaches get away right from under their noses a little while back. You two get given this job to make up for that mess?”
“You keep your mouth shut
about that. This mess is plenty big enough for you to worry about. Take the shells out of that sawed-off and hand it over. You’re under arrest, Adams, for the murder of a federal officer.”
“It was accidental, you know that.”
“You’ll get a chance to tell your story.”
“Beecher, I don’t think you’d make an impartial witness, somehow.”
“That’s too bad. You can do two things—kill me like you did Hoyt, and hope the barkeep doesn’t pass your description on to the authorities, which he will, or you can surrender to me right now and take your chances in a court of law. I know what happened wasn’t intentional, and I’ll say so, you can trust me on that. Now choose.”
Clay disliked Beecher intensely for the hold the man had over him, and for the way Beecher and Hoyt had set up their confrontation with him. True professionals would have disarmed Clay and then kept their distance while they asked questions of him, not put their own lives in jeopardy by moving close enough to punch him in the stomach and have one of their own pistols yanked into play. Beecher and Hoyt were responsible for Hoyt’s death, not Clay, and yet Beecher’s ultimatum was the only one Clay himself could think of—kill him or trust him. Clay’s dislike of Beecher was not sufficient to provoke the former, yet he was reluctant to accept the latter.
Beecher stooped to retrieve his hat and fallen gun. He was wise enough to holster the .45 and allow Clay his decision without the threat of more gunfire. Still Clay said nothing. Beecher went over to Hoyt and examined the gaping hole in his body.
“Back-shot. That’s bad news for you, Adams. They won’t believe that was an accident if I’m not there to testify for you. You anywheres near to making up your mind, mister?”
Clay broke open his shotgun and ejected the spent and live shells, then offered the weapon to Beecher.
“That’s good, Adams. That’s smart.”
Beecher swung the shotgun against the side of Clay’s head, a blow so hard Clay’s spectacles flew from his nose. “That’s for Lee, you son of a bitch!” He repeated the action. “And that’s for me!” Clay sank to the ground, clutching his head. A pair of handcuffs were dropped in front of him. “Get up and put these on yourself, you sorry piece of horsemeat.”
By midmorning the next day, Clay had still not been allowed so much as a drink of water. Beecher had tied his ankles beneath his horse’s belly, and was not about to make any effort to release his prisoner for matters of small consequence to Beecher. Clay had already been obliged to piss into his pants, and was hoping he would not feel the urge to move his bowels before they reached whatever place Beecher was taking him to. Clay’s packhorse and Hoyt’s animal, bearing Hoyt, trailed behind.
Beecher was talkative, confident, at ease with a man so completely cowed and under his control. “Lee Hoyt and me, I don’t mind telling you, we were drug through the mud on account of those red killers down there. There was talk we’d be showed the door, then Lee got this idea to follow up on something we heard down Magdalena way about Arch Powell, and after the mess down there we needed to show ourselves in a better light, as they say, so we followed that rumor about Powell, and found out he’s on his way home to Killdeer, which we told about to certain sons of bitches in high office who wanted to show us the door, and these particular sons of bitches sent some other officers to wait for old Arch, and they’re the ones that got him, instead of me and Lee, like it was supposed to happen and shine that better light on us. Well, after that we weren’t about to trust any son of a bitch again, so we decided we’d come up here and round up the rest of the Powell outfit ourselves, and we were set up pretty good with old Mort the barkeep willing to pocket some dollars and be on the lookout for us. We figured you’d be the first one in the net, but you had to go mess things up for us, Adams, and I don’t like how you did it, nossir, I don’t.”
“If you were half as smart as you think you are, you’d throw in with me and get the whole bunch. You and Hoyt aren’t great planners, Beecher. You want to impress your boss, you’d better set me loose so we can talk about a way to do it. We both want the same thing, to get the rest of Powell’s boys under lock and key.”
“You’d just as soon shoot them, Adams. That’s how bounty hunters work. Alive or dead, it never did make any difference to the likes of you.”
“All the same, you’d do well to consider it.”
“I’m not about to consider any such thing.”
“Where are we going? Killdeer’s back the other way.”
“Cortez. They’ve got a lockup there that’ll hold you just fine. I take you back to Killdeer, too many people are going to know there’s something going on, and I don’t want to scare off the rest of Arch’s boys. They were all on their way there to join up with him for another go-round on the owlhoot trail, that’s the word we got down Magdalena, and chances are they’re still coming, even if Arch is dead.”
“You can get them all, with me.”
“No deal, Adams. I don’t do business with the man that shot my partner. You can sit awhile in Cortez till someone comes for you.”
“You’ll never take Arch Powell’s boys on your own.”
“Not all at one time, I’ll admit, but that won’t be how they come, Adams. They’ll come alone, and I can handle snakes like that all by myself. You can …”
Clay saw the left half of Beecher’s hat suddenly compress at the same instant the right half was carried away by an exiting bullet that carried with it bone and brain. Strangely, the hat remained on Beecher’s head even as he fell from his saddle and hit the ground, one boot still lodged in a twisted stirrup. Clay was about to spur his horse away, then remembered his handcuffs; the key was in Beecher’s pocket. He was unable to make up his mind before a lanky boy sprang from the trees and grabbed the bridle of his horse. A man carrying a Winchester then appeared and stepped over to the body of Beecher. When he turned, Clay recognized Mort.
“That feller,” said Mort, “was a fool.”
“I’m in agreement,” said Clay.
“Fools don’t live long in this world. What me and my friend need to know, mister, is if you’re a fool too.”
“That would depend, now, wouldn’t it?”
“Depend on who the hell you are and what exactly you want around here, and you better make more sense than you done yesterday, because you sure aren’t who you said. That boy there, he’s kin to Ham Deidsheimer, so you just trot out the truth right now.”
Clay looked down at the boy. “Son,” he said, “I hate to be the one that tells you, but Ham’s dead, killed by a bounty hunter, they say. I only met him but once, and that was just for a short while, and he trusted me and told me about Arch Powell and how there was a rendezvous set up for Killdeer for him and the boys from Montana to meet again. Well, I wanted to be in on that, so I came here under false pretenses, just to get heard by Arch Powell, and I judged those two federal men wrong, and almost paid for it large. I apologize to you for taking your kinsman’s name. No harm or insult was intended, and that’s my story to you both.”
The boy said nothing. Mort stepped closer. “Mister, I don’t believe a word of it, but you killed the other one, so you’re no friend of the law, and you can go, but don’t you be seen hereabouts again. Arch is gone, and now Ham, you say. That’s two good men and two fool laws dead, and that’s enough dying for now.”
“Thank you. There’s a key in his pants.”
Clay’s wrists were released, the rawhide thongs binding his boots cut.
“You remember what I told you,” Mort warned.
Clay’s shotgun was passed to him, and the lead rein of his packhorse. “Get,” he was ordered.
During the first hour of his freedom, Clay wondered if another shot might come from the woods either side of the trail to Cortez, but in the second hour he began to worry less. Mort and the boy would dispose of Beecher and Hoyt, and the incident would be buried along with them. Their horses would be traded to thieves who would take them across miles of territory, beyond th
e reach of any investigation that might or might not arise as a result of Beecher’s and Hoyt’s unofficial enterprise. Clay had come to the Killdeer region with a view to accomplishing exactly what the dead men had come for, and found himself leaving with nothing more valuable than his life.
PART TWO
THE WINE OF VIOLENCE
25
He had hired several lawyers, but not one of them had been able to accomplish anything beyond lightening his wallet. Nevis Dunnigan should have been a famous man, but was not, and he had at last become aware of the reason—no one really cared if he was the originator of Venus Revealed or not. His masterly depiction of an unclothed Lovey Doll Pines had become so popular an attraction at its home in a Kansas City saloon, the owner had allowed copies to be made, many, many copies, and unauthorized copies were made from those copies, until it seemed that Lovey Doll was everywhere seen in her glorious nakedness. But the name of the artist, that precious scrawl at the lower-right-hand corner of the original canvas, was a frustrating blank, insulting by its absence the artistic temperament of Nevis, and doing him no earthly good in the world of commerce either.
The lawyers had listened to his cry for redress, and in the end been unable to help him. He doubted now that they had even believed he was in fact the artist. Lovey Doll was not only present on barroom walls across the west, she was to be found in collections of erotica, in both pasteboard and sophisticated stereopticon versions; her fleshy charms were displayed inside the lids of cigar boxes, even rendered in miniature on snuffboxes. It was outrageous that a single work should have provided the model for so many applications of Lovey Doll’s likeness, when not a cent in royalties trickled down to the creator. Nevis felt that if the manufacturers of canned goods could have braved public opinion and pasted Lovey Doll across all their products, they would have, so enticing was the goddess of love. Art, the sublime stuff of Nevis’s soul, had been prostituted in the service of Mammon, and no one cared about or rewarded the man whose talent had been so abused.