No one had struck it rich in Nuggettown for some time now. I always figured that the name must have been somebody’s idea of a joke. Nuggets weren’t exactly jumping out of the ground, and any resemblance between this place and something as civilized as an actual town was purely accidental.
The Lady Belle Mine was the only one in town that had produced any significant quantities of gold. The rest of the outfits were small claims, like the one belonging to me and Pete, using rockers and sluice boxes that barely showed enough color to keep the owner of the claim in grub and liquor money on a day-to-day basis.
To be fair, I guess that the town wasn’t all that bad. It was young and it was rough, but it had a future. There was talk of the Colorado Central Railroad building a spur line up the mountain to haul the ore from the Lady Belle. We had four saloons, a blacksmith, the assay office, a general store, and three eating houses. We also had a hotel being built, which, when finished, would be the biggest building in Nuggettown. We even had a Methodist circuit rider come through once a month to preach a sermon to the miners and sing hymns.
The street that ran through the center of town wasn’t anything more than a mud-filled, rutted path that the freight wagons used to haul ore down the side of the mountain to Denver, and haul supplies back up. An overnight soaker had left about six inches of mud that sucked at my boots as I waded from one side of the street to the other. I had checked out most of his usual hangouts, but I hadn’t found my buddy, Pete, anywhere.
Sloshing through the mud, I made my way across the street to Otto’s Saloon. Being constructed of rough-hewn lumber, Otto’s was one of a dozen buildings in Nuggettown. The rest of the town’s dwellings were old Army tents sold as surplus to prospectors after the war. Otto’s was currently the largest building in town, having a second story of rooms that were mostly rented out for an hour at a time. It was a nice day out, being early June, and someone had propped open the door with an old wooden beer crate with “Schueler & Coors” painted on the side.
There is a particular aroma that is characteristic of anyplace that men congregate to socialize. A strangely inviting mixture of beer, smoke, unwashed bodies, and horses hung in the air. A saloon was a damned fine place and I took a deep breath as I stood in the doorway for a few seconds to let my eyes adjust to the dim light inside.
I heard him before I saw him. That is, I heard the commotion, and where there’s commotion, Pete Canfield is usually right in the middle of it.
“You heard what I said, you damned cheat. I want my money back.” The guy sitting across the card table from Pete pushed his chair back suddenly and stood to his feet. The other two gents at the table hurriedly gathered their winnings and stepped back out of the way. Pete sat where he was, his chair tilted back, calmly looking at his accuser, who had a .44 caliber Smith & Wesson Russian tucked into his belt.
Pete let his chair fall forward. Resting his hands on the edge of the table he started to laugh. “You think I need to cheat to beat you at cards, you sorry sack? We all knew you only had a pair of sixes! You’re the one who called the bet. Consider your loss the price of a poker lesson.”
I had seen this guy around a few times before. His name was Kenny Bassett, but he went by the name of Bass. He was maybe a couple years older than Pete, who was twenty-five, which would have made Bass about my age. He didn’t work any claim that I knew of. He just hung around town playing cards and drinking and running his big mouth. He fancied himself some kind of tough guy and liked to flash his gun around, but, to be honest, I never saw him use it for anything other than decoration. Sometimes all it took was some tough talk and the butt end of a gun sticking out of your belt to bully people into submission. Pete wasn’t one of those people.
I heard Bass say, “I’ll give you ’til the count of three.”
Where did this guy come from? He must be reading too many of those dime novels.
Bass stood there with his arms hanging loosely at his sides, poised, as though he were about to do something stupid. Then, sure enough, he did it.
“One . . .”
Pete pushed out with his arms, causing the table to smash into Bass’s legs. The sudden impact forced Bass off-balance, and he wound up sprawled facedown across the table. Cards and chips and beer glasses were strewn everywhere. Pete, who was still in his chair, stood up, grabbed Bass by the collar, and dragged him off of the table.
Bass hit the floor and rolled onto his back. That’s when I saw the look in his eyes. It was the same look that I had seen once before when this fellow I knew down in Texas miscalculated the amicable nature of a horse he had just mounted. That horse jumped up and arched his back, then took to bucking and kicking like a grasshopper on a hot griddle. The guy wound up backside-down in a water trough with a “what-in-the-hell-justhappened” look on his face. That was how Bass looked now. Things had not gone as he had expected them to.
Pete bent over and grabbed Bass by the shirt front. He was kneeling with one knee pressed into Bass’s stomach, which made it difficult for Bass to take a breath.
“Here’s another lesson for you. There’s no such thing as a fair fight, you damned idiot.” With that said, Pete drew back his right arm and pounded Bass in the face three times in rapid succession, then stood up and waited for him to get to his feet. But Bass was out of it. He laid there, dazed and moaning, blood flowing from his nose and a split in his lip.
“Are you about done here?” I asked as I walked up behind Pete.
He turned and flashed a smile that would have made Lilly or any of the other girls in Otto’s melt. I’d seen it happen many times. Pete was young and lean with weathered features that made him look a little older than he actually was. He had dark hair and brown eyes that he said he got from his mother. She was half Mexican. He cut quite a swell with the ladies.
“Oh, I think that school’s out for the day.” He reached down and yanked the gun out of Bass’s belt. Bass flinched a little but he didn’t make any other move. Pete walked over to the bar and dropped the gun into a brass spittoon that was in desperate need of attending to. Then the two of us headed outside.
We stood on the boardwalk in front of Otto’s while Pete rolled a cigarette and struck a match to it.
“You know,” I said, “you could at least make an effort to go twenty-four hours without getting into some kind of trouble. He could have shot you, and you’re not even wearing a gun.”
“No, but you are,” Pete said with a grin. “I saw you walk into the bar.”
“So you were counting on me, once again, to pull your sorry butt out of the fire.”
“Hell, there was no fire there to speak of,” he said with a shrug. “One of these days, Bass is going to get his self or someone else killed. He should be thanking me for schooling him in the manly art of pugilism.”
“Where did you ever learn a five-dollar word like ‘pugilism’? Are you fixing to start a school and be a schoolmarm?”
Pete smiled and threw a playful jab that knocked the hat off of my head. I returned a couple punches of my own that nearly caused him to stumble right off of the boardwalk and into the muddy road.
Picking up my hat, we found a relatively shallow place in the mud and started across the street. We were almost to the other side when Pete, who was leading the way, turned suddenly and grabbed hold of my arm like he had just remembered something that couldn’t wait.
“You know, Ben, they hung McCall a few months ago.”
“You mean Jack McCall, the coward who shot Hickok last year up in Deadwood? Yeah, I heard about that. What of it?”
“Do you remember the cards that old Wild Bill was holding when McCall shot him in the back of the head?”
“They say it was two pair . . . aces and eights. All black.”
Pete looked around to make sure no one could hear. He took on a serious expression that was a rarity for him. If I hadn’t known Pete any better, I would have guessed that something had spooked him. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Those are the same cards I was holding in my last hand. What do you suppose that it means?”
I must have looked a little fearful because he laughed and gave me a wink and a slap on the shoulder. “I’m just joshing with you, Ben. You know I don’t believe in any of that nonsense.”
“Then you weren’t holding aces and eights?”
“Oh, I had them all right. I just don’t believe that ‘dead man’s hand’ superstition stuff.” He turned and took a big step across the last rut, and stood there on the other side of the road.
People had gone to referring to aces and eights as the “dead man’s hand” on account of Wild Bill Hickok holding those cards when he was killed. I don’t mind telling you, I was a little spooked by the whole thing. My ma used to read to me from a book of Shakespeare when I was a kid. There was this one line from a play where this guy named Hamlet says to his friend, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” That line always stuck with me. There are some things that we just don’t know. There are connections between people and events, causes and effects that we don’t see. Pete, on the other hand, didn’t go in for any of this “superstitious nonsense,” as he put it.
I exhaled a deep sigh and joined Pete in front of the assay office. “I wish you hadn’t of told me that. It makes it all the more difficult to tell you what I know.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s why I was looking for you. I’ve got some news you need to hear.”
“What news?”
I kicked the toe of my boot against the side of the boardwalk to loosen some of the mud; then I repeated the process with the other boot. “I just got back from Denver with a load of lumber for the Lady Belle. I saw Parker. He’s on his way here.”
Pete looked as though I had slapped him right across his face. “Parker is coming to Nuggettown? Today?”
“Yep. Wasn’t very far behind me. Should be here anytime.”
“What the hell is he coming here now for? He’s not supposed to be here for another week!” Pete sounded aggrieved, as though Parker had jumped the gun and cheated him somehow. I wasn’t sure if his question was rhetorical or not, so I ignored it.
Suddenly, the color kind of drained from Pete’s face as another thought occurred to him. “You don’t suppose that Sam knows Parker is on his way, do you?”
“That’s what I mean to tell you. Sam is with Parker. They’re both on their way here. They said that they had given you plenty of time, and since you weren’t coming to Denver, they were going to come to you. They said to tell you that your time is up.”
Pete started shaking. He sat down on a bench that was there in front of the building. Resting both elbows on his knees, he hung his head and sighed. A long moment of silence followed while he let the news sink in.
After a while, he sat straight up and took a deep breath. He turned to look at me with eyes wide and a sarcastic grin on his face. “Damn it all, Ben. You’re a veritable fountain of good news today, aren’t you? Anything else I need to know? Has my horse been snake bit? Am I dying of consumption? You might as well get it all out in the open.”
I never did like being the person to carry bad news to another, especially when there wasn’t any way to help share the burden. “Don’t shoot the messenger, Pete. You knew this day was coming. The two of them have been looking forward to this ever since you shot off your big mouth to Sam.”
Pete jumped up like he had sat on a burr. “What was I supposed to do? Sam had me in a corner and called me a coward. I had to say something.”
Pete started pacing the boardwalk. Then, in an all too characteristic show of drama, he threw his arms up into the air, a look of bewilderment on his face. But that was Pete. Everything was a theatrical production with him. He’d scratch himself on some barbed wire and he’d be sure that he’d need to see the doc to get it stitched up. If he got in a fight with one guy while playing cards, the next day it would be three guys that he “whooped,” and whooped soundly. To talk to Pete, he always had the fastest horse in the territory, could play cards better, drink more, and shoot straighter than anyone else.
“What was I supposed to do?” he repeated.
“Well, there’s no way to beat the devil around the stump now. You don’t say those kinds of things to Sam unless you intend to follow through with it.”
Pete looked hurt by my words. “I have every intention of following through with it. I just thought that I would have a little more time. You know . . . a little more fun.”
That was the thing with Pete. He never really took anything seriously. I was always the responsible, level-headed one. It was pretty much the pattern of our relationship. Pete would do something reckless and get himself in trouble. Then I would come along behind him and clean up the mess. Before the dust had even settled, Pete would land in trouble somewhere else, and I’d bail him out again. But he was my friend.
My folks hailed from Tennessee but moved to Texas when a neighbor of theirs, Davy Crockett, told my pa that fighting Mexicans would be a heap more exciting than plowing up rocks. Crockett had just finished serving six years as a United States congressman, so he probably figured that it was time to go somewhere where he stood a chance of actually getting something done.
Pa had more farmer than fighter in him, but he did like the idea of moving to Texas. So in the spring of 1836, my ma and pa settled on a little farm near Nacogdoches in the eastern hill country. I was born in 1850, the youngest of four boys and two girls, all born and raised Texans.
At the age of fifteen, I left home and drifted west and south, working on some of the biggest cattle spreads in Texas, including the Allen and King ranches.
I met Pete three years ago while pushing cattle from Waco to Abilene. We hit it off right from the start. Everyone on the drive liked Pete. You could never get a lick of work out of him. He was irresponsible and a bit of a braggart, but he always had a joke or a story handy. He was never dull to be with and he was generous to a fault. He would spend his last nickel to buy you a drink.
We wound up in Colorado because Pete had the notion that he might strike it rich prospecting. We told folks that we worked our claim together, but the reality of it was that at any given time I would be the one busting rocks or panning or shoveling gravel into the sluice. Pete would be lying on the ground chewing on a stem of grass with his hat pulled down over his eyes to keep the sun out. He’d lie there, oblivious to the work that I was doing, regaling me with stories of his exploits with the women he had known or the scrapes that he had been in.
Eventually, I gave up the claim and went to work as a freight hauler for the Lady Belle. Pete manages to get by with his card playing, horse racing, or whatever other diversions he can concoct to help separate Nuggettown’s miners and prospectors from the fruits of their labor.
Pete stood there with his hands on his hips, looking east out of town along the muddy road that wound its way through the aspen and white pine, down the mountainside and out onto the eastern plains. He looked the way a man looks when something that he has been running from is about to catch up to him. It wasn’t fear. I had seen Pete scared before. This wasn’t it. It was more like resignation.
After a minute, he turned to me again. “If Sam and Parker are coming here today, then I guess this is as good a day as any to get it done with.”
We had taken about three steps, turned the corner of the assay office, and there he was. Ezra Parker stood there in front of us, casually leaning against the corner of the building as though he had been there for some time. He held a cigar in one hand and a lit match in the other. Instead of lighting the cigar, however, he let the match fall and then ground the toe of his boot into it to extinguish the flame.
He spoke conversationally, as though the three of us were standing at the bar in Otto’s, sipping beers together and talking about the weather. “Hello, boys.”
Parker was an imposing figure in his mid-fifties, with keen, cold gray eyes that contrasted sharply with his all-black ensemble; from his low-crowned, flat-brimmed Boss Stetson, to a pair of knee-high cavalry boots. A black frock coat covered his six-foot, two-inch frame, and beneath the coat was a Colt .45 Peacemaker that had been broken in years earlier while scouting for General Crook. He had been with Colonel Reynolds up on the Powder River in his campaign against the Northern Cheyenne and had gotten a Sioux arrow in his leg during the Battle of the Rosebud. The arrow had left him with a slight limp that, on anyone else, might make them appear frail. But on Parker, it made him look seasoned, like a hard-earned battle scar.
He held up his cigar for us to see. “I know it’s a nasty habit. It’s one I’ve been trying to free myself of.” He placed the cigar into an inside coat pocket. “But I admit; sometimes I miss the smell of them.”
Pete hadn’t moved an inch.
Parker took a step closer and addressed his remarks directly to him. “You’ve got a nasty habit too, son. It’s the habit of not taking responsibility for your actions and your words. That’s a pattern of behavior that needs to end now . . . today. I aim to help you out with that.”
He took another step closer so that he was within arm’s length of Pete. His gray eyes had a way of burning into you like ice on your skin on a hot August day. “Sam and I will meet you at the peach orchard outside of town. You’ve got one hour to ready yourself. It will be Sam’s show, but if you don’t show up, it’ll be me coming to look for you.”
Anyone who figured that this might be a good time for Pete to hightail it out of town and hide out in the mountains for a few days didn’t know anything about Parker. He had been one of the army’s top scouts, and folks said that he could track a butterfly through a heavy fog. Running wasn’t an option.
Pete stood tall and spoke calmly. There was no malice in his words. No fear. No bragging, haughty spirit. Instead, there was a maturity and an acceptance of the way things were that was foreign to the way that Pete usually handled himself. He looked Parker square in the eyes. “I’ll be there, but I’ll need a couple of hours to settle up a few matters.”
Parker pulled his watch from his vest pocket to check the time. “All right, then. One o’clock at the peach orchard. I’m gonna take you at your word, son. Don’t disappoint me.”
The two of us stood frozen in our tracks as we watched Parker turn and walk away. The sound of his boots on the wooden boardwalk was accented by the “ta-THUMP, ta-THUMP” of his game leg.
I got to thinking about those aces and eights. “What are you going to do, Pete? Are you sure that you want to go through with this? You know what it means, don’t you?” I think at this point I was even more worried than Pete was, and I wasn’t the one with the prospect of having Parker gunning for me. More than one man had found out the hard way that Parker’s gun wasn’t there as a fashion statement.
“I know what it means, Ben. It means that I face up to Sam, or I will have to face Parker. Either way, it’ll never be the same after today.”
“I’ll back whatever play you make, but you gotta be sure it’s what you want.” I waited a moment longer for Pete to make his decision. When you’re stuck having to make a decision that you don’t want to make, sometimes it’s best to let your instincts take over and not give it too much thought. Thinking a thing to death can drive a man crazy, especially a man like Pete Canfield, who generally acted first and thought about the consequences later—if at all.
The whistle over at the Lady Belle blew, signaling the shift change for the miners. Up the street somewhere, a dog started howling in protest to the shrill of the whistle, making for an eerie kind of symphony that echoed off of the mountain and disappeared down into the valley.
Pete looked at me and I could see in his eyes that he had made up his mind. “I should have taken care of Sam months ago. I should never have let it get this far. It’s time I did the right thing.”
He removed his hat and ran his fingers up his forehead and through his hair. Then he used his hat to brush away some of the dust that had settled on his pants. “I’ve got some goodbyes to say down to Otto’s, to Lilly and some of the girls. Then I’m gonna put on some clean duds so I’m looking my best. Why don’t you meet me out at the claim in a couple of hours?”
He put his hand on my shoulder and smiled. “Don’t worry none about it. Things will work out. They always do for me, right?”
Pete and I agreed to meet at the claim at a quarter of one to ride out to the peach orchard together. Then he turned on his heels and headed back to Otto’s.
The time came and I met Pete where we had staked our claim along the river on the outskirts of town like we had agreed. I sat there on my horse and watched as he came out of the tent all bathed and clean-shaven and wearing a new suit. Where in the world he had gotten a suit I couldn’t imagine, but he did it. Around his waist he had a fancy Cheyenne styled Mexican Loop gun belt with a floral design worked into the leather. Protruding out of the holster was a pearl-handled Colt.
He came out brushing the dust from his hat. Slicking his hair back and placing his hat on his head, he asked, “How do I look?”
“Like the guest of honor at a funeral,” I joshed.
In his best dramatic fashion, Pete clutched at his chest as though in pain. “Well, thank you kindly for those words of encouragement. I guess I don’t need Parker slinging lead at me with a friend like you around.”
Untying his horse from the aspen limb he had been hitched to, he grabbed hold of the saddle horn and threw his leg up and over, landing in the saddle without touching the stirrups.
“I am your best friend, Pete, and I’ll ride with you down to the peach orchard or up into the mountains if that is what you want. But, truth be known . . . I’m proud of you. You’re doing the right thing.”
The two of us rode side by side on our way to the peach orchard, which grew on the southern end of town. Neither of us said anything, but we both noticed how empty and quiet the streets seemed. By this time, everyone had heard what was going to happen and folks were making their way to the orchard to see the show. I wondered what it was about a situation like this that brought out the perverse curiosity of people. The same thing would happen at a hanging. People would drive for hours and make a holiday out of watching a man get his neck stretched. We passed several people on the way who, for whatever reason, had decided to stay in town. Each one waved and shouted, “Good luck, Pete,” as we passed by. Some just laughed.
Approaching the livery on the edge of town, we saw a man dipping his bandanna into a horse trough and washing his face. He looked our way as we rode past. It was Bass. He had a nasty black eye that was almost swollen shut, and a split lower lip. He glared at Pete. “I hope you get everything you have coming to you, you son of a bitch.” Pete rode by without acknowledging his remark or even his presence.
We could see and hear all of the hullabaloo while we were still a ways off. Some of Lilly’s girls were decorating the little orchard with flowers and hanging streamers from the limbs of the peach trees, which were in full bloom. The saloons in town had hauled out some of their chairs in a wagon, and they were being unloaded and set up for the people who were there to witness the occasion. There were tables with food set out, and Silas Gant was tuning up his fiddle for the dance that was to follow.
Parker stood there waiting. His coat was unbuttoned and the sides were pushed back. The sun glinted off of the cylinder of the Peacemaker that hung in the holster at his side.
Pete and I brought our horses to a halt and dismounted. I saw Pete’s legs buckle a little when he stepped out of the stirrups. I thought about reaching out to steady him, but I didn’t want to cause him any embarrassment. I’ve got to give him credit. He composed himself, stood up tall, took a deep breath, and puffing out his chest, walked right up to Parker.
Parker gave Pete a quick once-over, noticing the way that Pete’s gun belt was rigged for a cross draw. “Are you ready for this?”
“I’m ready,” Pete replied. “I should have taken care of Sam months ago.”
A smile lit the face of the Reverend Ezra Parker, as he held out his hand. “That’s what I wanted to hear, son. That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.”
Samantha Ann Murphy stood under a little impromptu archway that someone had made and painted white and hung with wildflowers. She wore a store-bought, white chiffon dress that she must have picked up in Denver. Her red hair hung loosely over her shoulders and made me think of lava flowing down the sides of a snow-covered mountain. She was already four months along but had barely begun to show.
Sam’s father, Thomas Murphy, owned the Lady Belle, along with two other mines between Denver and Colorado Springs. He hadn’t approved of Pete courting his little girl, but when he found out that she was with child, he changed his tune, pushing for a wedding so his grandchild wouldn’t be born a bastard. He even offered Pete a job as a foreman in the Lady Belle to make sure that he could provide for Sam and the baby. For the past three months, he had been trying to get Pete down to his mansion in Denver so he and Sam could tie the knot, all to no avail. It was actually the Methodist preacher Ezra Parker who came up with the plan to take the wedding to Nuggettown.
“Isn’t she a sight?” Pete was transfixed.
“That she is.” I agreed.
“I don’t know why I dreaded this so much—even if she did goad me into proposing, calling me a coward. All I’ve ever had to worry about is me. A wife and family is a big responsibility.”
Pete and I joined Parker and Sam beneath the little archway. Pete took Sam by the hand. “You sure are beautiful. I’m sorry that it has taken me so long to come to my senses. From this day forward, I won’t disappoint you ever again. That’s my promise.”
Sam struggled to hold back the tears that gathered in the corners of her eyes. Smiling, she placed her hand gently on the side of Pete’s face. “I love you, Pete, but I don’t want you to have any regrets. If you are not committed to this all of the way, then walk away now. No one will stop you.”
Pete bent down and kissed her. “My only regret is not marrying you sooner.”
Reverend Parker opened his Bible. “Are the two of you ready?”
Placing his hand on Sam’s stomach, Pete answered, “The three of us are ready.”
“Let’s get started then. Dearly beloved . . .”
The reception that followed the wedding was a real shindig. The couple was well liked in the community, and the whole town was happy to see Pete finally do the right thing by Sam. Everyone was dancing or milling around, conversing and enjoying the mountain air, the clear skies, and the June sunshine.
I was leaning against one of the wagons with a cup of cider in my hands when Parker approached. “It was a real nice service, Reverend.”
Parker flinched a little at the title and then chuckled.
“I’m not quite used to that yet. I have been called ‘Captain’ for so long, this ‘Reverend’ stuff is pretty new to me.”
“I never really thought much about it,” I said, “but I guess a lot of preachers were something else before they took up preaching.”
“That’s true. Preaching is a calling, but not everyone gets the call at the same time in their lives. For me, it was a pretty late development . . . and an unexpected one. It might be a cliché, but it’s true that the Lord does work in mysterious ways. This was my first time officiating at a wedding.”
“Well, I think you did a bang-up job.”
“Thank you, Ben. I appreciate that.”
“I’m curious, though, if you don’t mind me asking. What would you have done if Pete hadn’t of decided to do the right thing? Suppose he had hightailed it out for the hills?”
The Reverend Parker got thoughtful for a moment. “The Bible talks about the man of faith actually being two men. There’s the old man with the old habits and old way of doing things. Then there is the new man that is being remade into the image of Christ. I’m not sure which man would have gone after Pete, but I’m pretty sure that it wouldn’t have worked out very good for him either way.”
The newlyweds finished greeting their other guests and made their way over to where Parker and I were talking. I shook hands with Pete and gave the bride a kiss on the cheek.
“How’s the old married couple doing?” I asked.
“Hell,” Pete remarked. “If I’d known that there was going to be drinking and dancing, I’d of gotten married months ago.”
Sam gasped and gave Pete a playful pinch on the arm.
“Ouch! What was that for?”
“You enjoy your drinking and dancing while you can, Mr. Canfield,” Sam scolded, “because tomorrow you start your new job as a foreman at the Lady Belle. You have responsibilities now.”
Pete answered with exaggerated seriousness. “I assure you, Mrs. Canfield, that I will execute my responsibilities with the highest degree of earnestness and industry.”
That led us all into a round of laughter that was suddenly interrupted by a gunshot. I saw Pete spin around and fall to the ground, followed by Sam’s scream. Two more shots rang out, fired almost at the same time. The first one was fired by Parker, whose gun seemed to appear out of nowhere. The second shot was mine.
It had all happened in a matter of seconds, as so many life-altering events do. Kenny Bassett had made his way to the wedding reception and mingled in unnoticed among the other guests. After fortifying his courage on hard cider, he waited for his chance to even the score with Pete. Now Bass lay dead on the ground with two widening circles of crimson staining his chest.
I hurried over to Pete to see what kind of condition he was in. The bullet had spun him around so that he landed facedown. Sam was crying, trying to roll him over.
Parker pulled her away gently. “Come on, Sam. Let Ben have a look.”
I rolled Pete over onto his back. I could see a hole in his jacket on the left side of his chest just over his heart. I started to undo the buttons on his jacket.
Suddenly, Pete opened his eyes and grabbed my wrist. “Careful there, partner. This suit ain’t all the way paid for yet.”
I jumped back, shocked and not a little confused. Sam ran over and threw her arms around Pete’s neck as he sat up.
“Careful, Pete,” I warned. “You’ve been shot.”
Pete got to his feet, albeit slowly, brushing the dust from his new suit. “I’m fine.”
“How is that possible?” I exclaimed. “You have a bullet hole in your chest.”
Pete reached up to feel the breast of the suit jacket he had on and probed the bullet hole with his fingers. He then reached into the breast pocket and pulled out a deck of cards that he had stuffed inside. Embedded in, but not penetrating, the deck, was a .44 caliber slug.
Now, I honestly don’t know what to make out of what I witnessed that afternoon in that peach orchard on the outskirts of Nuggettown. Maybe there was something in the curse of the aces and eights—the dead man’s hand—and maybe it was just superstitious nonsense like Pete said. Or maybe it was like the Indians would say; that Pete’s medicine was stronger than the curse. Reverend Parker had a different take on it. He said it was the providence of God that wouldn’t allow Pete to be taken before his time.
One thing I do know for sure. I could go to a thousand different weddings where everything goes off without a hitch. But let my buddy, Pete, get married just one time and there’s a commotion. And where there’s a commotion, Pete Canfield is usually right in the middle of it.
(SDG)
Michael R. Ritt lives in a small cabin in the mountains of western Montana with his wife, Tami, their Australian shepherd, Lucky, and their nameless cat. He enjoys studying history, theology, and natural science, and has published several short stories and poems in anthologies and magazines. He is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers, Western Fictioneers, and Western Writers of America.