He was holding a dime novel close to a low-lit lamp at his table, moving his lips over the words. I could have saved his lips a lot of work. I could make out the title of what he was reading, Young Wild West and the Salted Mines, or The Double Game for a Million, and I had read it. It was about five years old and it wasn't worth the match it would have taken to burn the sucker up.
Wasn't no use saying anything, though. Just my opinion. And it might have resulted in me being beat up by a little fella in a dude outfit. He had that same look Billy Bob gets when he's reading those things. It's somewhere between the one a man gets when he's having his first peek at a naked woman, or is getting pulled into a religious soul-saving fever. Either one makes for a dangerous time if interrupted or disagreed upon.
Sitting next to Blue Hat was a fiftyish man, thick around the middle, with bullwide shoulders, a black derby hat gone green, and a face that looked like lumpy gravy poured over peanuts. I figured he'd once had the pox. On his upper lip were a few stray hairs that he probably called a mustache, but they reminded me of the prickles around a porcupine's butt. The way his eyes were squinted, you got the impression he was bored and wanted to shoot someone, just anybody, no matter how small the cause.
And he had the equipment to do the shooting. In a half holster hooked at his middle, dangling like a metal Johnson in leather underwear, was a single action Colt's .41 short barrel. It was engraved with all manner of gee-gaws, and the grip was faded, yellow ivory.
You didn't see folks toting guns like that out in the open much anymore, but this fella looked as comfortable that way as a pig in slop.
I didn't look at him long, least he catch me staring and decide to end his boredom by seeing how close he could space six rounds in one of my eyeballs.
I went over to the bar. The bartender was behind it, sweeping furiously with a broom. Dust was whipping up and around him like a twister, but if he was doing any good I couldn't tell it. It all settled down behind him as he swept forward.
He was skinny and wore an apron with more spots on it than a pinto horse. Most of the spots were beer, but there were some real interesting, crusty ones that I couldn't make out. His hair was the thing that had my most attention, however. It was slickered down with what looked like axle grease, and he was wearing some foo-foo water that made me dizzy before I got to him.
Behind him on the wall, just above the flyblown mirror, was a sign that read:
NO GUNS ALLOWED IN HERE
and just under that:
WE DON'T SERVE NIGGERS, FREED OR OTHERWISE.
I would have bet they backed up the bottom sign, but I didn't see anyone rushing to throw the fella with the derby and the pistol out in the street.
I sat down on a stool and the bartender came over. When he got up close I could smell something familiar and unpleasant underneath all that foo-foo water. I saw too, that a couple of big blue-bottle flies had lit in his hair. They were buzzing and beating their wings something furious, as they were stuck there like dog hairs to molasses.
"What's fer ya?" the bartender said, leaning over the bar at me. I could smell peppermint candy on his breath, but it wasn't enough to overpower the foo-foo water and what was underneath it. I couldn't help but lean back on my stool.
Earlier, I'd thought I might buy a beer without a fight, but at that moment, I wasn't so sure my belly could handle it. The bartender's aromas were about to smother me.
"Nothing for me, thank you," I said. "I just come by to ask a favor." I went through my rigamarole about the poster, and was just about to hand him one to look over, when out of the back of the saloon came this stocky man with a thatch of brown hair on his head that looked like a little dead animal. He had a determined stride, like a miner on his way to a free lunch. He walked right up to the bartender and slapped him a lick on the head with the flat of his hand. The blow was loud enough to be mistaken for a rifle shot. I think the passed-out drunk even flinched a bit. I know the farmer and his gal came untwined for a moment, probably thinking the wife had showed up mad with a Winchester. Behind me and to the left, I heard the man with the derby laugh. I knew it was him without even turning to look. I figured the kid hadn't looked up from his dime novel.
I got back on my stool, because I'd already started for the door, and put my bottom on it lightly, just in case I needed to run after all. I leaned over the bar to look for the bartender. He was stretched out on the floor, face down, flat as a rug. The man who had slapped him was looking at his hand. His face was crunched up and a low moan came out from between his lips. There was some of the little mans hair slickum on his hand and one of his flies—mashed now.
"Damned idiot," the stocky man growled, and he kicked down behind the bar. The skinny fella had only been playing dead, because now, like a big toad, he hopped to his feet and darted for the door. The stocky man sailed a half-full bottle of whisky after him, but his aim was off and slow, and the bottle went over the bat wings and into the street just as Skinny took a sharp left and disappeared. Way that apron had slapped around him as he ran brought to mind something, but right at that moment it wouldn't come to me.
"I told you not to slicker your hair down with that damned cow mess," the stocky man yelled after Skinny. He turned to me, gave me a kind of grin, then he bent down behind the bar and came up with a nasty-looking rag. He used it to wipe his hand off, saving the fly and the spot it was on for last. He thumped the fly with his forefinger down the length of the bar where it skidded in a puddle of beer and skipped like a stone to the floor. Then he used the rag on the spot and tossed it under the bar again. He sniffed his hand and frowned. He got a bottle of whisky and poured a smidgen on his palm, sniffed again, and looked pleasant. He put the bottle back and smiled at me. "What's fer ya?" It was exactly the same voice and words Skinny had used, and I realized then that Skinny had the same knack mockingbirds do, except with people. He could copy perfectly whatever he heard spoken.
"I take it he ain't the bartender?" I said.
"No, he ain't. He ain't nothing but an idiot-fella I let sweep up now and then for a few beers and peppermints, and he ain't worth them. He tries to pretend he's me from time to time, but he ain't supposed to do nothing but clean up some. God . . . can you imagine, combing your hair with cow pies?"
"Well, it ain't something I'd do," I said.
"I think it's them blue bottles he likes, thinks they're pretty. I've seen him looking at them in the mirror here. I don't know why I even let him come around."
"Some of us are just big-hearted and foolish," I said.
"Reckon that's the truth. And it don't get you nowhere, nowhere at all. There's such a thing as being too damned good. Kind of a curse to me. My mama's at fault. She used to say to me, 'Riley,' she called me Riley, 'you take a care for other folks now, you hear?' and I always have. Not that it's done good by me, no sir. I'd be rich if I wasn't always giving of myself and my money. That addle-brained bastard is just a waste of my time. He don't do nothing I don't have to do again."
"It is a burden," I said, "I can see that. What I was trying to do here, Mr. Riley—"
"Just Riley."
"Riley. Was find out about putting these posters up. One inside, one out. They've got to do with a medicine and magic show this afternoon and tonight."
"Just as long as it ain't a tent preaching poster. I don't allow them kind of posters in here. Makes business fall off. How old are you anyway, boy?"
"Seventeen . . . and a half?"
"Old enough. How about a beer on the house?"
"I'd like that, Mr. Riley."
"Remember, just Riley." He reached under the bar and brought out a half-filled glass of beer and slapped it on the counter. It tasted lukewarm and it was as flat as Amarillo. I figured it was what a customer had left undrunk and Riley had saved it for just such an occasion, being so big-hearted and neighborly like as he was. I didn't drink no more of it, just sat there and tried to look fat, dumb, and happy. The first part was the toughest, as I wasn't a hundred and
forty pounds soaking wet with rocks in my pockets.
About that time I heard a chair scrape. I looked over to see Derby getting up and Blue Hat following, bending the dime novel into his back pocket. As they walked out, Derby grinned at the drunk and kicked the fellas chair out from under him. The drunk smashed to the floor and lay there with his face down and his butt up, a little stream of red running out of his nose. Derby and Blue Hat both laughed, and to get in on the act, Blue Hat kicked at the drunks butt and sent him topping on his side. The drunk lay there, bent up like half a doughnut, breathing hoarsely. One of his eyes half opened, then closed down quickly, like an old biddy lifting and lowering the shade, casuallike, for a peek at the neighbors,
"You need you some practice sitting in them chairs, don't you, you old souse?" Blue Hat said.
The drunk didn't say anything.
"You'd best answer when I talk to you," Blue Hat said, and he kicked the drunk in the belly.
The drunk made a gurgling sound and threw up some of what made him a drunk.
"Now you answer me," Blue Hat said in that sour, whining voice of his, hitching up his pants at the same time. "You don't sit in chairs so good, do you?"
"No," the drunk managed.
"What's that?" Blue Hat snapped.
"No sir," the drunk said, and more vomit bubbled out of his mouth.
"Filthy, old fool," Blue Hat said. "You puke on me and I'll kill you." He looked over at Derby to see if he was doing his meanness right. He must have been. Derby was grinning some tobacco-stained teeth at him.
Blue Hat's head bobbed in my direction. "What you looking at? You need something?"
"Not a thing," I said and turned back to the bar. I put my hand around the glass of beer just to have something to do. The beer in the glass wobbled from side to side.
Riley suddenly took an urge to wipe the bar, He grabbed the nasty rag out from beneath it and worked on down to the far end, quicklike. I watched Derby and Blue Hat in the mirror, trying to look like I was just staring into space.
"You keep it that way," Blue Hat said.
Derby smiled at me, and there was something in that smile that chilled me to the bone. If Blue Hat had been carrying a gun I'd probably have felt the same way about him.
They laughed and went out.
When I was sure they were gone, I went over and helped the drunk back into his chair. By the time his head touched the table again, he was out, I used a snot rag I had to wipe his mouth and nose, and left it on the table in case he wanted it when he woke up. The two lovers opened their eyes to peep at me, then closed up again. I went back to the bar and took my seat. My hands were still shaking so I put them around the beer glass. I felt sort of weak,
"Who were those knee slappers?" I said to Riley, trying to sound a lot braver than I felt. "Father and son?"
"Dog and flea," Riley said softly, and he glanced toward the door when he said it. "That there fella in the derby hat," he added picking up one of my posters and pointing to the part about Billy Bob and his expert pistol shooting, "he'd most likely make your man look like a blind nigger with a slingshot."
"Billy Bob is the best shot I've ever seen," I said. And that was the truth. I didn't like him any, but he could shoot. I'd seen him challenged many times, and no one came close. He could toss nickles in the air and hit them dead Center. He could hold a mirror in one hand, lay his pistol over his shoulder, and shoot a playing card in half edgewise. Even on his bad nights he was better than anyone else.
"Well, you ain't seen that fella bang at it," Riley said. "Ain't no slouch on the fast draw neither. Maybe you've heard of him? That there was Texas Jack Wentworth."
Texas Jack. I'd heard of him all right. Even read about him in some of Billy Bob's dime novels. He wasn't as well known as Wild Bill Hickok, Buffalo Bill, and some others, but he did have a rep as a crackerjack of sorts.
Of course, now that I'd seen him, I was a mite disappointed. The dime novels had painted him out to be a tall Greek god, Hell, he wasn't even tall. And that face of his wasn't recent. That was a mug he'd carried with him all his life, and those smallpox lumps weren't new either. Worse than that, he wasn't nothing but a bully and had a pet bully he took around with him. It was downright disappointing. At least Billy Bob looked like the characters in the books, even if there wasn't one written about him.
But it was pretty much on record that Jack had once out-shot Doc Carver, and at one time Carver was the finest shot in the world. With a Winchester 73, Carver broke five-and-a-half thousand out of six thousand glass balls tossed in the air, and he did it in a seven and a half hour stretch. I heard too that he let some of his opponents use shotguns, and he used that Winchester, and still showed them up. So if Jack beat them like the stories went, even if Doc Carver was at the end of his career, he did some good shooting. That into consideration and there being a story that he'd once backed down Wild Bill Hickok, it was fair to say that Riley was right when he said the man wasn't no slouch.
"That Jack is a corker," Riley went on, suddenly talking as if the man were his brother. "I know all about him and I've heard tell more. He grew up around here before he went off and got famous, became an Injun fighter and buddy to John Wesley Hardin. Not that he wasn't known around here when he was your age. But it wasn't nothing special like later, he just shot a couple of nigger farm hands over some peach wine. Seems like maybe he shot his uncle too, but it's been a while since I heard that, and it could have been a cousin or something.
"Anyway, he went off and was wrote about in them dime novels. Then, about five years ago, a winter colder than the far side of a widow's bed, I was in here polishing the fly tracks off the glasses, when in walks this sombreroed greaser, big as you please. Strolled up to the bar like he was a white man, sitted himself on a stool, about where you're sitting I think, and called to me for a whisky.
"Well, you can bet I didn't hop to it, that's what I'm trying to tell you. I don't cotton to niggers and greasers and I sure don't cotton to them in my place trying to order me around like common help. I told him we didn't serve niggers, even if they was Mexican niggers.
"He got uppity on me and argued, then he jumped off the stool and pulled a pistol out from under his coat. And I'll tell you, for a Mex he was fast. I was standing here tonguing my teeth, waiting to hit hell's hot water, when a loud voice from the rear of the place yelled, 'Hey, Peppergut!'
"That Mex turned, bringing his gun around, and there was Jack, though we didn't know it was him at the time. He'd come in and nobody had recognized him. It was winter, you see, and he was bundled up coats and shirts and had on this derby. And it had been some years.
"Well, I was thinking that this fella—Jack, but I didn't know it then—was going to get his big mouth shot off, and to be honest, that was all right by me, cause that meant I wasn't going to get bucked off my ride, you see. But before I could hit the floor and crawl off, Jack drew.
"Let me tell you, sonny, that was the prettiest draw I've ever seen, especially with it coming out from under all them coats. Ever seen a rattler strike, boy? It's something if you're not on the biting end of it. A rattler can coil, come off the ground and throw its head back, pop them fangs and hit you faster than you can blink. Well, this was even faster, I swear."
"Before that Mex could level his pistol. Jack fired. His shot hit the Mex solid between the eyes, and that peppergut folded up like a pair of fresh-washed long Johns and hit the floor. Wasn't nothing left for him but to be hauled off to the trash ditch on the other side of town. I kept the Mex's pistol."
Riley reached under the bar and came up with it. It was a big, old, heavy ,44.
"Ever since that night, Jack's had free drinks on me and run of the place. And that kid in the blue hat is Noel Reasoner. He was working for me at the time, sweeping up in the back there. He saw the whole thing. He was always reading them dime novels, you know, and had just read one with Jack in it. And lo and behold, the top dog his ownself shows up and blows a spick's brains out right in fron
t of him. Kid loved it. He's been following Jack around ever since, learning to shoot from him, and I hear he ain't even half bad."
"That's why Jack can tote a gun in here? He saved your life?"
"Jack could tote an elephant in here if he wanted," Riley said. "I ain't no fool. I just let him be. Homer, that's the sheriff, he don't bother him none neither, and we don't fault Homer none for it. He was something in his time, best sheriff in these parts. He tracked down and arrested Wild Bill Longley single-handed once. But now he's seventy and he and Jack get along good. And the town, they don't care that Jack totes a gun when they can't. He's sort of a living legend. He's in them dime novels and all. I reckon he's deserving of some special privileges."
From what I'd seen, he was deserving of about six feet of dirt on a box with him in it, but I wasn't the one who was going to say anything about it. I didn't reckon I was ready for my six feet of dirt, and if I wanted to stay out from under it, I reckoned the best thing for me to do was not run my mouth. Besides, I might not even get the six feet of dirt. They might treat me like they did that Mexican fella. Toss me in the garbage ditch outside of town.
I put a couple of posters and smiled my way out of there, and when I came out I saw the idiot sitting on the boardwalk drinking from the bottle Riley had throwed at him. He looked pretty lonely sitting there. Even his flies had flown off. He glanced up at me and grinned. I grinned back and got four bits out of my pocket. It was a lot of money, but I felt like him getting slapped and kicked was sort of my fault.
"Here," I said, "take this and go buy yourself some peppermints."
He took the money, looked at it in the palm of his hand, then smiled at me. He got up and walked off.
I watched him go down the boardwalk toward the general store, apron flapping around him, the whisky bottle dangling from one hand like a big, fat finger. It struck me then what he reminded me of. The crazy Onin fella I had found in the ditch that winter.