“Way you look,” I said, “not much. There’s a town not too far from here I’ve heard of. Might be someone there that can do some fixin’s on ya.”
“That’d be right good,” the fella said. “My name is Cramp, or that’s what people call me anyway. I don’t remember how I got the name. Something back in slave days. I think the man got my mama’s belly full of me was called that, so I became Cramp too. Never knowed him. But, I got to tell you, I ain’t up to a whole lot of history.”
I got hold of his leg and tried to ease it out from under the horse, but that wasn’t workin’.
I went back to my horse, got a little camp shovel I had when I was in the Buffalo Soldiers, and dug around Cramp’s leg, said, “They call me Nat.”
He said, “That diggin’ is loosin’ me up, but I don’t know it’s gonna matter. I’m startin’ to feel cold.”
“You’ve quit loosin’ blood for now,” I said, “otherwise, you’d already be scratchin’ on heaven’s door.”
“Or hell’s back door.”
“One ta other.”
I got hold of his leg and pulled, and it come free, and he made a barking sound, and I looked at him. His face was popped with sweat, and it was an older face than I’d realized, fifty or so, and it looked like an old dark withered potato. I got him under the shoulders and pulled him away and lay him down, went back to his horse and cut one of the saddle bags off with my knife, and put it under his noggin’ for a pillow. His sombrero had come off, and I went and got that and brought it over to him, and was about to lean it on his head, when I looked up and seen four riders comin’ in the distance.
Cramp must have seen the look on my face, cause he said, “Did I mention that there’s some fellas after me?”
“That didn’t come up. Just said there was folks had somethin’ agin you.”
“That would be them. They’re mad at me.”
“They have a reason?”
“They don’t like me.”
“Are you normally likeable?”
“I’m startin’ to pass out, son.”
“Hang in there.”
“Can’t…Don’t let me be buried in no lonesome ground.”
He closed his eyes and lay still.
I got my long glasses and gave them a look. It was four white fellas, and one of them looked to be damn near as big as the horse he was ridin’. They all had the look of folks that would like to hang someone so they could get in the mood to do somethin’ really bad. They was looking right at me, the big cracker with his hand over his eyes, studying me there in the distance.
I got hold of Cramp and dragged his big ass on the other side of the horse and stretched him out so that his head was against the saddle and his feet was stretched out toward the North, which was the direction I wanted to go. Actually, I kind of wanted to go any direction right then, and it crossed my mind that I could get on my horse and just ride off, fast as I could go, leave Cramp to the buzzards, the flies, and the ants, but havin’ been partly ruint by too much good raisin’, and being of too much character, it just wasn’t in me. But I didn’t have so much character I didn’t think about it.
I went around and picked up the Sharps and looked in the saddle bag I had cut off, and found some loads in there, a whole batch of handmade shells. I studied the situation awhile, decided that when things was over there’d either be me and Cramp dead, or there would be some spare horses, so I led my nag over near where the other horse lay, grabbed his nose and pulled him down, way I had been taught in the cavalry, pulled out my pistol and shot him through the head. He kicked once and was still, and now I had me a V shaped horse fort. It was an old trick I’d learned fightin’ Indians. The other thing I’d learned was not to get too sentimental about a horse, you never knew when you might have to eat one or make a fort out of him. The one horse I’d really liked, me and a woman I cared about had eaten him, but I don’t want to get side tracked and off on that. It’s a sad story and doesn’t end well for any of the three of us involved.
Lying down on my belly beside Cramp, I laid out the rifle across his horse and took me a bead. A Sharps fifty, which is what Cramp’s rifle was, can cover some real ground, but it takes some fine shootin’ to know how to get the windage and judge the way the bullet will fall from a distance. I was a fine shooter, but that didn’t stop me from worrying, especially now that they were ridin’ toward me fast.
I beaded down on the big man, but another rider moved in front of him, so he became my target. I had him good in my sights, but I stopped and sucked my finger wet, stuck it up in the air and got me the pull of the wind, then I beaded again. I took a deep breath and let it out slow as I pulled the trigger. The rifle popped. I knew that from where they were, it wouldn’t sound like much, and if they didn’t know their business, it would seem to them I’d missed, cause it was a long damn ways.
The man I shot at was riding right along and it seemed that a lot of time passed before he threw out his hands and I seen some dark wet leap out of his chest and he fell off his horse.
I thought: What if ole Cramp here deserves what he’s gonna get? That went through my head for a moment, but then I thought, even if he does, he ought not to get it when he’s about dead, least not like this by a bunch of angry peckerwoods.
They started firing at me with Winchesters, like the one on my dead horse, and the bullets fell well short. They had stopped, but they hadn’t shot their horses. They had dismounted and were standing by their horses firing away, the bullets plopping well in front of me. I knew right then, them not shooting their horses, they weren’t as committed as I was.
I said to myself, “You boys hold that position.”
I loaded another round in the Sharps and laid it back across the dead horse and took a deep breath and cracked my neck the way I can by moving my head a little sharply, and took aim. I was feelin’ frisky, so even though I should have aimed for my target’s chest, I sighted a little high of his forehead and fired. The shot knocked him off his feet, causin’ a puff of dust to throw up, and I figured I’d gotten him right between the peepers, thought that was guess work, because all I saw were the soles of his boots comin’ up.
The other two, mounted up, and with the big man leading, they went back in the other direction. I popped a load after them, knocking the big man’s horse out from under him, throwing the bastard for a few loops. He was on his feet quick and he got down behind the dead horse, and the other fella kept on ridin’, like someone had stuck a lighted corn shuck up his horse’s ass. I took a shot at him, but he kept ridin’, leaning low over his horse like he was tryin’ to mix himself into it.
A moment later, he was out of sight, and I turned my attentions back to the big fella.
I loaded again and raised up this time, on one knee, and shouldered the rifle and took a long deep breath, and fired. This one plopped into the dead horse. After that, I lay down behind Cramp’s horse with my head barely up, and watched. The big man didn’t move until the day wore down and it got near dark. He got up then and took off at a run in the other direction. I could have let him go, because it was a hard shot, it being dark and all with just some moonlight, but I was kind of worked up, them tryin’ to kill me and all, so I raised up, and aimed, and fired, and got him. He went down like a three hundred pound sack of shit.
“Asshole,” I said.
I wasn’t sure how to go from there, or where I was goin’, less it was that town I told Cramp about, but one thing was certain, Cramp wouldn’t be going with me, least not alive. He was colder than a wedge and stiff as horse dick at breedin’ time.
When I felt wasn’t no one circlin’ in on me, I got up and walked out a pace, carrying my Winchester with me, leavin’ the Sharps, but bringin’ the loads with me, least they surprise me, come back, get hold of his rifle and pick me off from a distance.
I walked in the direction I’d seen one of the horses go, and when it was good and dark, I seen his shape outlined by the moon. I was able to cluck to him and get him to
come over, not mentionin’ to him I’d killed two of his kind on this day.
I rode him back to where Cramp lay, got my saddle out from under my horse, and swapped it onto the horse I’d rustled up. I got hold of Cramp and threw him over the horse. He was so stiff, he rocked there for a moment and nearly fell off. I climbed on board with the Winchester back in the boot, and the Sharps, now loaded, across my lap, and started in the direction of the town I knew was supposed to be out there, a place called Hide and Horns, if memory served me. I hadn’t never been there, but I’d been told about it. Before most of the buffalo was killed out in the area, it had been a place for selling hides and horns and bones for fertilizer.
As I rode along, I didn’t let myself get too sure of things. I kept my eyes open and my ears perked.
So far, I hadn’t torn open any of my cuts, and I determined they had healed up good. I guess there was some things goin’ my way.
Hide and Horns, out there in the moonlight, looked like a place you went to shit, not a place you went to live. But there was folks there and the street was full of them, and a lot of them looked drunk. Thing was, I was still wearin’ my army jacket from when I was in with the Buffalo Soldiers, and this bein’ the panhandle of Texas, that blue jacket was bound to cause some former rebel to come unhitched and want to kill him a nigger. I had not removed it because of pride, but now as I neared Hide and Horns my pride was growing smaller and my feelin’s about not gettin’ skinned for an incident of birth was growin’ larger.
I decided to ride around the street, out back of the town with my dead companion, and see what was on the far side, which is where I figured the colored would be collected, if there was any. I rode around there, taking it long and slow, and when I got to the other end, there was some shacks and a lot of tents there. No coloreds to be seen, but there was four or five Chinamen and some China girls outside next to a big fire and a boiling pot of laundry, which one of them, a young China girl was movin’ around with a board. Beyond her, I could see the town proper, lit up with lanterns and such, and drunk cowboys crossin’ and wanderin’ around in the street like they really had some place to go.
I got off my horse and led it toward the China folk, Cramp rockin’ back and forth, and when I got up close to the pot, the girl, who turned out to be a woman, only small, and beautiful in the firelight, looked at me like I’d come from hell to borrow a cup of sugar. A Chinaman walked out into the firelight with an axe. He was pretty big for a Chinaman. He said, “Do for you?”
“Not if you’re plannin’ on choppin’ on me.”
He shook his head and his pigtail slapped from side to side. “Do for you?”
“I got a fella here needs a place in the dirt.”
The Chinaman, maybe not sure what I meant, or just wanting to satisfy his own curiosity, came over and took hold of Cramp’s boot and pulled on it, said, “Dead nigger.”
“Yeah,” I said, “he won’t be havin’ dinner. But, I’d like some. I got Yankee dollars.”
“How much dollars?”
“Enough.”
“Pussy?”
“Beg your pardon.”
“Sell pussy. You want?”
“Oh.”
I looked around. Four of the China girls had bunched up near one of the larger tents, and they were looking at me, smiling. Two of them were right smart lookin’, one was so ugly she could chase a bob cat up a tree, and there was one pretty good looker with her leg cut off at the knee. She had a wooden leg strapped on and had a crutch under her arm, and from what I could make out in the firelight, she appeared to be missin’ a tooth on the far right side.
“Half a woman,” the Chinaman said pointing at the wooden leg gal, “she cheaper.”
“Actually, she’s more than half,” I said. “Way more.”
“She five penny.”
“Well, they are all as lovely as the next,” I said,” tryin’ not to look at the ugly one least I get struck by lightnin’ for lyin’, “but I’m gonna pass. I’m hungry.”
I looked at the other one, at the wash pot. The Chinaman, figurin’ I might be sizin’ her up for a mattress, said: “Daughter, not sale.”
“Okay,” I said. “About that food?”
“Chop suey?” he said. “Cheap.”
“What?”
“Chop suey,” he said again.
“That’ll work. Whatever that is.”
“Bury dead nigger?”
“He ain’t in no hurry,” I said. “I’ll tend to the horse and eat before I bury him.”
As I was starting to remove my saddle from the horse, the Chinaman walked by the China girls, and reached out and cuffed the cripple, knocking her down. He said something in China talk. I went over and grabbed his shoulder and shoved him back, and wagged a finger at him. “Hey,” I said. “Ain’t no call to slap a woman around.”
The Chinaman still had the axe in one hand, and he eyed me and clenched the axe a little tighter. “She go to work.”
“All right,” I said. “Give her time. And lighten up on that axe, or you’ll wake up with it up your ass.”
I reached down and picked up the crutch she had dropped, then I reached down and pulled her up and put the crutch under her arm. She smiled that missing tooth smile. She looked pretty damn good, even if she could suck a pea through that hole in her chompers with the rest of her teeth clenched.
“Chop suey,” the Chinaman said to the cripple, and she limped away into a tent on her crutch.
What Chop suey was, was warm and delicious, though right then it might have seemed better than it really was cause I was hungry enough to eat the ass out of dead mule and suck blood out of a chicken’s eye.
I sat on my ass on the dirt floor under a tent roof and ate up and kept an eye on my Chinaman, as he had never let go of that there axe, and he had a way of lookin’ at me that made me nervous. I had pulled Cramp off the horse and stretched him out on some hay that was off to the side of the tents, next to a cheap corral which was mostly dirt, wind, a frame of wood, and a spot of tarp. I unsaddled the horse and bought it some hay and water, and had a China boy curry him down. I paid for the service, and then I went in and ate.
The four whores didn’t depart. They sat nearby and looked at me and giggled. The Chinaman said, “They want see black come off.”
“It doesn’t.”
“They think you, dead nigger, painted. They not know things.”
“Tell one of them they can rub my skin, see if it comes off.”
The Chinaman told them somethin’ in Chinese talk, and one of the girls, who now that I was closer, looked pretty young to me, came over and rubbed on my arm.
“No come off,” she said.
“Not so far,” I said.
“Let see dick,” she said.
“Now what?”
“Let see dick.”
“She want know its black,” the Chinaman said.
“She can take my word on that one, and maybe later I can show it to her in private.”
“That be two bits,” the Chinaman said.
“For the woman?”
He nodded. “Two bits.”
I looked at the China girl, said, “What’s your name?”
“Sally,” she said.
“Really?”
“Sally,” she said.
“They all Sally,” the China man said, holding the axe a little too comfortably. “You can call Polly or whatever, you buy pussy.”
“I’ll think that over. First things first, where’s the graveyard?”
The Chinaman pointed. “Back of town, that side. No niggers.”
“He’s dead. What does it matter?”
“No nigger. No Chinaman.”
“Well, that puts a hitch in my drawers,” I said. “Promised him I’d bury him somewhere wasn’t lonesome.”
“Bury in pig pen, but deep. Not deep. Pigs will eat him.”
“No, I had something different in mind. Like a graveyard.”
“White fellas, not like. Sho
ot black dick off.”
“That wouldn’t be good.”
I got up and went outside and walked over to Cramp. He wasn’t lookin’ too good. Startin’ to bloat. I got my knife and slipped it under his ribs and jabbed hard and let some of the bloat out, which was as bad air as you ever smelled. I stood over to the side while he deflated a mite.
The Chinaman had followed me out, still carrying his axe. He said, “Damn. Dead nigger smell plenty bad.”
“Dead anything smells plenty bad…You think maybe you could put that axe down? You’re makin’ me a nervous.”