Magic Wagon

  "Don't palm nothing," Billy Bob said. "I would find that disagreeable."

  Checkers brought over a pocket watch, a derringer, and a little bag full of bones, dirt, and beads.

  Billy Bob put the watch in his inside shirt pocket. "Indians are hell for trinkets," he said, "but what they need to know time for?" He poured what was in the bag into his hand then back into the bag. "What's this?"

  "His medicine bag," Checkers said. "Has his powers in it"

  "Did him a lot of good, didn't it?" Billy Bob said, and tossed it into the fire. He flung the derringer as far as he could to the back of the cave. "Whore's gun," he said. "That and tin horns."

  Billy Bob put the lid on the box, and we went out of there, back down to where Albert waited, me and Checkers carrying the box with Wild Bill in it. It was pretty heavy.

  I didn't tell Albert right then all that happened. I figured he knew a lot of the story from the way I looked at him, and I thought maybe he'd heard the shots, though later he said he hadn't. With the storm like it was, and us being deep inside the cave, he hadn't heard a thing.

  We strapped the box on the side of the mule, and Billy Bob took to leading it behind his mount. Me and Checkers rode behind him, almost side by side, and behind us was Albert.

  We'd gone a mile or so when the storm got so bad every little bit of the sky lit up with forks of blue-white lightning and the thunder roared like there was a cannon war going on.

  About the time all this storm business got built up, Checkers made his play. Maybe he and the Indian had planned such a thing all along and it hadn't gone good. I don't know. Maybe Checkers planned to rob us after we had the body and the Indian's money, that way he could make double. And maybe he hadn't planned nothing at all and was just mad because he hadn't made his share like he thought he should.

  Doesn't matter now. With Billy Bob in front of him, he had the perfect chance to do to him what Jack McCall had done to Hickok.

  I seen him go for his gun, and I tried to yell, but with the thunder and lightning like it was, I didn't know if Billy Bob could hear me. But he did, or maybe he'd just been waiting for Checkers to make his play all along. Billy Bob swiveled on his critter, and as he did, I seen there was a smile on his face, like he was about to get a present he'd been waiting a long time for.

  The way Billy Bob's hand moved was too fast to be real. I figured it was a trick of the lightning or something. One second his hand was on his knee and the next it was full of pistol and the pistol was cocked.

  Only he didn't get to kill Checkers. The lightning did it. It was faster even than Billy Bob, and it reached down out of the sky and hit Checkers' little pistol and there was the sound like a giant whip cracking, then Checkers and his horse exploded and I was wearing some of him and some of his suit and some of his horse.

  Billy Bob, with a wail, threw himself off his horse onto the ground and started pounding his hand against the ground, screaming. "I had him beat. My first white man. I had him beat," then he began to cry.

  I just sort of sat there, dumbfounded, wearing Checkers, his suit, and his horse. Finally I got down off my horse, led him over a piece, got down on my knees, and threw up.

  When I was able to get up, I looked over and seen Albert was helping Billy Bob to his feet. Billy Bob was saying over and over, "I had him beat. My first white man."

  Albert helped Billy Bob over to his horse and put him in the saddle. He patted him on the knee. "There's just a whole bunch of white men, Mister Billy Bob. Don't you fret. There'll be others."

  "I had him, Albert. I had him whipped fair and square, didn't I?"

  "Couldn't have been no fairer or squarer," Albert said, like he was talking to a little kid.

  "It ain't right. I had him beat."

  "Plumb beat," Albert said.

  "By the time Wild Bill was my age he'd done a lot of his killing already," Billy Bob said.

  "Things were different then," Albert said. "Folks was more for killing in them times. Got up with it on their minds. They had more niggers to do their work, and there was lots of free time for shooting folks."

  "I had him," Billy Bob said, shaking his head. "I had him."

  Actually, I had a lot of him. I got a handkerchief and cleaned off what I could and got sick some more.

  When I was feeling some better, I went over and stood with Albert and he put his arm around my shoulder. We looked at what was left of Nose Picker Chauncey and his horse. It wasn't much. Just a heap of bones, smoking meat, some saddle leather, and a hunk of checkered suit.

  Maybe I should have felt some worse about old Checkers, but to tell it true, I couldn't work up a lot of enthusiasm for feeling bad. I figured after he killed Billy Bob he planned to finish off me and Albert, not knowing we had guns on us and seeing us as easy pickings, which I reckon I would have been. And besides, I just couldn't warm myself to a man that spent the largest part of his life with a finger up his nose, even if he did end up sadlike, being cooked with a horse and a checkered suit.

  It seemed like it took forever to get out of the hills, what with the storm being like it was and Billy Bob sort of pouting along, stopping now and then to shake his fists at the heavens and to cuss God and the lightning, calling them some of the meanest, foulest names I've ever heard a mouth utter. The way that thunder rumbled and that lightning sizzled blue-white around Billy Bob, framing him now and then like a bright-colored picture, I half felt it was cussing and threatening him back.

  By the middle of next morning we got down out of the hills and back to Deadwood. The sun still hadn't come out.

  We collected the wagon, the mules, and Rot Toe, who smelled mighty sweet from all them women petting on him, and we got out of town lickety-split, started heading South-West, which was a direction that suited me fine.

  We hadn't gone a day out of that storm when, Billy Bob decided to fix up some cracked sideboards in the wagon. He'd been putting it off for a month and there didn't seem any sense in it right then, but I think he did it to make light of what that medicine man had told him about them boards in Wild Bill's box being made out of sacred trees. He knew I'd told Albert the story, and he knew that Albert believed it, and I about half believed it, so he wanted to show us what fools we were.

  Like I said, we'd gotten ahead of the rain for a while, and had all been sitting on top of the wagon, trying to get us some sun, and suddenly Billy Bob had us pull over.

  Usually, any work to be done, me and Albert did it, but this time Billy Bob took it on himself. He dragged the box with Wild Bill outside the wagon, propped the body against it, knocked out those old sideboards he wanted to replace, and put in some boards from Wild Bills box.

  It took about half a day for him to get that done, as Billy Bob wasn't no joiner to speak of, and by the time he was finished and we were on our way, thunder was right behind us, rumbling loud, and when I turned to look back I got the willies, cause them dark storm clouds that were following us looked to have come together in the shape of Elijah's stovepipe hat.

  That was the day that storm started pushing for us, and it stayed after us from then on.

  A week or so later, we stopped in a little town to do our act, and Billy Bob had a joiner make a new box for Wild Bill. When that was done, he took the guns that were in Wild Bill's rotting sash out, cleaned them up, and put them in the corpses bony hands, rigged up those hinges in the elbows and those wires that cocked the guns.

  And that's the true story of how we came by that body in the box, not the one Billy Bob was telling the crowd about a noble red man giving it to him because he was Hickok's son. I mean, his tale was a good story, all right, but it was nothing more than a damned lie.

  ***

  To get back to this time in Mud Creek. Billy Bob told his story, then he went out to the clearing with everyone tagging along behind, and he did some shooting.

  And I mean shooting. I want to witness that I hadn't never seen him as good as he was that day. He split playing cards edgewise, like always, but now he
was doing it from farther away. The same for when he held the mirror with one hand and shot over his shoulder with the other. And he hit nickles tossed in the air with either hand. Before he'd only done that kind of shooting with his right hand.

  To put it simply, the man could not miss.

  He even went as far as to strike a match with a shot, and I'd heard that was just an old wives' tale and couldn't be done. But he done it, and neatly.

  When next I looked out at the crowd, I seen Skinny had joined us. He still had on his apron. He was eating from a bag of peppermints, drooling it down his chin. His eyes looked like a couple of dark holes. It was kind of good to see the old boy.

  Then I seen something that made me considerably less happy.

  Blue Hat and Texas Jack.

  CHAPTER 5

  The way those two were smiling, I knew there was going to be trouble. They might as well have been waving flags. Texas Jack was grinning like what Billy Bob was doing was the silliest and easiest thing in the world, and wasn't it a damned shame that all those people were oohing and aah-ing over him so much.

  Blue Hat would look over at Texas Jack like it was all a big joke, then back at Billy Bob the same way. But I thought I could see a little something else in his face that he was trying not to give away. Surprise and pleasure.

  Next thing Billy Bob told the crowd he was going to do was a thing I'd never seen him do before, and I felt certain that he was about to go from star attraction to jackass. It was a shot I'd heard him talk about, one Wild Bill used to make, but it was something he'd never tried, not even in practice.

  He leaned over to Albert and said something, and Albert looked at him like he was crazy, then Billy Bob said, "Go on," loud enough that I could hear him, and Albert went back to the wagon.

  "Ladies and gentlemen," Billy Bob said, "my father used to take a bottle with a cork in it, place it at thirty paces, and with a pistol shot, drive the cork into it and knock out the bottom of the bottle without breaking the neck. Never heard of no one else doing it, and I'd like to show you the spirits that guided my father now guide my hand."

  Albert came back with the bottle, walked off thirty paces and set it up, then he legged it back behind the line Billy Bob had drawn in the dirt with the toe of his boot.

  Billy Bob, without so much as blinking an eye, drew his pistol—the left one, mind you—and without so much as aiming, fired.

  The shot drove the cork into the bottle and knocked out the bottom without breaking the neck.

  The crowd cheered, and I'll tell you, so did I.

  I reckon Texas Jack and Blue Hat didn't cheer, but they had their mouths open, and even when Jack got his cranked up, Blue Hat's stayed that way. Skinny dropped his bag of peppermints. It was a shot even an idiot could appreciate. Well, that's some damn good trick shooting," Texas Jack called out.

  Billy Bob turned and looked in the direction of the voice. Texas Jack was elbowing his way through the crowd, and the crowd was stepping aside, fast.

  "Thank you, fella," Billy Bob said when Jack was up close.

  "Yeah," Jack said rubbing his chin, "that's about the best trick shooting I ever seen, except for Wild Bill himself."

  "You seen Wild Bill shoot?"

  "Yep, I did. Wasn't nobody could out-trick-shoot Wild Bill."

  Billy Bob smiled. "Reckon not."

  "But trick shooting isn't the same as facing a man with a loaded gun. That's a whole nuther thing."

  The smile went off Billy Bob's face. "He proved he could do that too."

  "With drunks and yellow bellies. He wasn't so big when John Wesley Hardin backed him down."

  "That's just one of them stories," Billy Bob said.

  "And when I backed him down."

  "You?"

  "Yeah. Name's Texas Jack."

  For a long moment Billy Bob stared at Jack, looking for that Greek god he'd read about in them dime novels.

  Jack stared back, opened his coat, and showed Billy Bob the butt of that fancy pistol. I don't think Billy Bob even noticed the pistol. He was still trying to fit that face with the one described in the books, and he wasn't having any luck at it.

  Jack let his coat fall back over his gun, then he turned and shouldered his way back through the crowd. When he reached Blue Hat he said, "Just like his pa," then the two of hem snickered their way toward the saloon.

  Billy Bob didn't even know he'd been called out, he was so amazed to see a dime-novel hero out walking around on two legs. But the truth of what happened slowly dawned on him. He turned to Albert and said, "Did that fella call me a coward?"

  "No," Albert said quickly, "he was just funning."

  "No, I think he called me a coward."

  "He did that all right," one of the men in the crowd said, helpfullike.

  Billy Bob turned to the man. "You think so?"

  "Certain," this big-mouthed fella answered.

  "It don't amount to nothing," Albert said, "just some old man shooting off wind. He most likely don't know Wild Bill from a pine knot."

  "No, the big mouth said, "that there is the real Texas Jack, and he once backed down Wild Bill."

  "The hell he did," Billy Bob said. "That's a lie. He didn't never back down no Wild Bill Hickok." He put his hands on his gun butts.

  "Well," Big Mouth said, sort of fading back in the crowd a bit, "that's still Texas Jack."

  Billy Bob looked at Albert, then he looked at me, then he looked at the crowd, which had started to shuffle.

  Albert cleared his throat. "Ladies and gents, we going to bring on ole Rot Toe, the wrestling ape now. He's from the same place my folks come from, Africa."

  "And he looks like your grandpa." It was Big Mouth again. Some of the crowd laughed.

  Albert smiled like that was the kindest thing ever said about him. "Well now, that just might be for true, just might be. We colored boys ain't always sure who our folks are."

  That got a big laugh. It sort of made me sick to see Albert do that, even if he was trying to turn the crowds attention from Billy Bob and onto something new.

  Albert led the crowd over to the ring, and Billy Bob, still standing like a cow that had gotten a lick from the butcher hammer, looked over to me and said, "Did that Texas Jack call me a coward? Was he making a showdown?"

  "I didn't get it that way," I said.

  "Yeah," he said, like he wasn't really asking my thoughts, just thinking out loud, "I reckon he did. Do you think that was the real honest-to-God Texas Jack?"

  "He don't look a thing like he was described in them dime novels, so I don't reckon it is."

  "No. No he doesn't," Billy Bob said, and he walked back to the wagon kind of hangdog-looking.

  I let out a sigh, figuring things were going to be all right, you know, and I went on over to the wrestling ring. When I got there, Albert had gotten Big Mouth to cough up some money and get in with Rot Toe.

  Rot Toe was on a leash inside the pen, the leash was attached to one of the ring poles. He was also wearing a muzzle and gloves so he couldn't bite or tear an arm or leg off a fella. Big Mouth, who was pretty good-sized, had his shirt off and was holding his hands wide and waving them around like he was about to do some serious damage on that Jungle ape.

  "Now you give my grandpa a real hard time, hear me, Mister?" Albert said.

  Big Mouth grinned at Albert through the netting. "I'm gonna choke him plumb to death."

  "You do that," Albert said. "We can always make plenty more nigger grandpas, can't we?"

  Big Mouth laughed. The crowd moved up close to the ring. Albert turned and saw me. He wasn't smiling like he had been. "Let Rot Toe go, Little Buster."

  I went around to the other side and took the leash and collar off of him. "Go get him," I said.

  And he did.

  Big Mouth grinned when Rot Toe turned and started across for him, and I guess it was them red silk shorts we made Rot Toe wear for decency that made Big Mouth in a good humor. They were funny. But when Rot Toe dropped down to running on his
knuckles, or rather them big, padded gloves, and Big Mouth seen the spit coming out between the muzzle straps, the color faded out of his eyes. It was too late for him to back down, and he'd already made a horses ass out of himself in front of all them people, saying how he'd strangle Rot Toe and all.

  Rot Toe grabbed Big Mouth by the head and leg, tossed him on the floor of the ring and jumped on him a bit. Big Mouth crawled off toward the netting, trying to find the place where Albert had parted it to let him in. But Rot Toe was used to that trick and he grabbed up Big Mouth again, this time by the feet, and slung him around in a circle, whipping him up in the air now and then like a bull whacker trying to crack a whip. Finally he let go and Big Mouth hit the netting and flopped back on the floor, his face and bare upper body marked with red net marks.

  "You about to tire him," Albert chanted at Big Mouth. "Stay with it, he looks real weak."

  Big Mouth screwed his face up, rolled to his feet, and yelled to Rot Toe. "Come get me, you ugly nigger."

  Rot Toe grunted and waddled toward Big Mouth. Big Mouth ducked and rushed in on Rot Toe, grabbed him around the middle, tried to pick him up for a body slam. Rot Toe wasn't going for it though. He locked his gloved fingers into the edges of Big Mouths pants and pulled them down with a jerk, which was another thing he did kind of regular which I forgot to mention.

  Big Mouth's big, white butt was poking out at the crowd and ladies screamed at the sight of it, which seemed reasonable to me. I sort of felt like screaming. A few of the ladies, sticking to the fashion of the day, fainted, and there was one or two that just stared like maybe they was in shock. The men were laughing so hard it darn near drowned out Big Mouth's cussing and the sound of his feet as he beat a hasty circle around and around the ring.

  You see, Rot Toe had run him the rest of the way out of his pants and was lazily following him on all fours, paying about half a mind to what was in front of him, and the rest of it to the crowd, which was cheering him on. Way Rot Toe bared his teeth looked a whole lot like a happy kid smiling.

  Rot Toe finally got tired of the game, caught up with Big Mouth, snatched his feet out from under him and flung him up against the netting a few times, then dusted the floor with him six or seven strikes, and wandered off in a corner to pick at fleas on his chest.