The Backstabbers

“Do we have a plan yet?” Arman Brossard said.

Luna Talbot smiled. “You can’t sleep either, huh?”

“Worrying about Ryan and Muldoon. I told them I’d come back for them. I plan to keep my word.”

“But are they still alive? Will they know I kept my word?” Broussard said. “Those are questions that vex me considerably.”

“As I said before, there is no clever plan. Johnny Teague knows that.”

“Johnny doesn’t want to get burned again. Losing those men . . . their ghosts are in his head.”

“If he’ll ride with us, we can overwhelm the Rathmores real quick. Take the fight out of them so there’s less killing to be done.”

“Well, that’s a plan. Of a sort,” Broussard said.

Luna looked at the sky. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many stars.”

“They’re always that way before a fight,” Broussard said. “Real bright. Brighter than you ever seen them before.”

Luna looked at him. “Really? Why is that, I wonder?”

“I don’t know why. Maybe the possibility of dying sharpens a man’s senses.” Broussard smiled. “Or a woman’s.”

“You know that from experience?” Luna said.

“Yes, I do.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I’ll bore you. I think sometimes I bore people with my talk.”

Luna smiled. “Maybe it’ll help me sleep.”

“All right, here goes . . . I first realized how a man sees, hears, and tastes things with a heightened sense of appreciation years ago when I first became a professional gambler,” Broussard said. “I was . . . what? . . . twenty-two years old at the time.”

“Young,” Luna said. “Young to be a gambling man.”

“Yes, very young. I was playing poker in the Number Seven saloon in Abilene when a lumberman by the name of Archie Kirk called me out. He’d been losing big all night and claimed I was cheating.”

“And were you?” Luna said.

“No. I don’t cheat. I’m a good poker player.”

“I’m sure you are. So what happened?”

“Well, the bartender and a couple of bouncers knew Kirk’s reputation as a troublemaker and took his gun away from him. It seems that he’d killed a man a few months before over the affections of a fallen woman and was a bad hombre to cross.

“About an hour later a man came in with a message for me. It was from Kirk, telling me to leave Abilene because he intended to shoot me on sight.” Broussard was silent, remembering. “I wasn’t about to let Kirk, a bully and a blowhard, put the crawl on me and knew I was facing a gunfight come morning. That night the stars were brighter than I’d ever seen them before and the whiskey in my glass was like . . . I don’t know, nectar, I guess.”

“Because you thought you were about to die,” Luna said.

“I figured there was a good chance that I might. Kirk had a reputation as a shootist and boasted that he’d killed five men. Looking back, I really didn’t believe his claim, but I didn’t disbelieve it either.”

“Had you killed a man before?” Luna said.

“No, I had not. I never even had to draw my gun before. After I got the message from Kirk, the bartender offered to saddle my horse and bring it out front, so I could make a clean getaway.”

“Where was the city marshal?” Luna said.

“Hickok was out of town serving a warrant, and his deputy was nowhere to be found.”

A mesquite limb dropped in the fire and sent up a shower of sparks. A man mumbled in his sleep, rolled over and was silent.

“To make a long story short, Archie Kirk saw me again next morning outside Murphy’s Grain and Feed Store on Walnut Street. He said something like, ‘Now I’ve got ye,’ and he went for his gun.” Broussard shook his head. “The gun had been returned to him that morning by Hickok’s deputy, for God’s sake.”

“You’re still here, so obviously he didn’t kill you,” Luna said.

“An astute observation, Mrs. Talbot. No, he didn’t kill me, and for the first time in my life, I was aware that I was fast on the draw and shoot.”

“You killed him?”

“I dropped Kirk with my second shot. He joined his shadow in the dirt and didn’t shoot back. I heard later that my bullet had severed his spine and he died six months later. It was self-defense, but I knew Wild Bill Hickok might not see it that way, so I got out of town in a hurry. In those days Bill’s method of keeping the peace was Bang! Bang! Bang! ‘Now what seems to be the problem here?’”

Luna smiled. “So I’ve heard.” She stretched her arms and said, “There’s still a few hours until sunup. I think I’ll try for some sleep.”

“Me too,” Brossard said. “All this storytelling has worn me out.”

* * *

Arman Broussard managed to drop off but dreamed of a pair of dancing skeletons in a cobwebbed mine shaft. He woke with a start, his heart thumping and his eyes wild.

* * *

Ben Kane was laid to rest by lantern light, and Len Cogan said the words.

“He and Martha are together now,” Anse Dryden said. “I think that’s what he always wanted.”

His eyes glittering, Dave Sloan looked across the grave at the foreman. “That, and an end to the Rath-mores.”

“I hear you, Dave,” Dryden said. “That was an obsession. In the end, I think it killed him. Made him not right in the head.”

Milt Barnett said, “Jake Wise always said that afore the Rathmores killed and skun him.”

“Jake said what?” Dryden said.

“That Mr. Kane wasn’t right in the head about the Rathmores.”

“How would he know?” Cogan said. “Jake wasn’t right in the head either.”

“How come you never told Jake that to his face, Len?” Barnett said.

“Quit that, both of you,” Dryden said. “I won’t have squabbling over Ben’s grave. All of you, go see to your guns and saddle up. We ride out at dawn.”

“Made up your mind, Anse, huh?” Sloan studied the big foreman for a few moments and then said, “You’re doing the right thing.”

“I want it done,” Dryden said. “I want the damned thing over with. It’s gone on too long.”

The punchers walked away from the grave, and only Sloan and Dryden remained. The two men stood in the gloom, measuring each other. Sloan was dying. He was dying fast.

Dryden considered what Sloan had said—“You’re doing the right thing.” Didn’t dying men always tell the truth? In Sloan’s mind at least, making war on the Rathmores was the right thing to do. Dying men don’t lie.

As though he’d read Dryden’s mind, Sloan said, “Anse, Ben is dead and now you got it to do. You wouldn’t tolerate sheep on your range, and the Rathmores are worse than any sheep. By their very presence, they’ll eventually destroy the Rafter-K. They have to be stopped before it’s too late.”

“You don’t need to lecture me, Dave. I know what’s at stake here. The boys are saddling up and the die is cast,” Dryden said. “By suppertime tonight, there won’t be a single Rathmore left alive in Texas.”

“And Rafter-K cows will graze in the Cornudas,” Sloan said. “That’s how God intended it to be.”