I didn’t know his name till I was ready to kill him. Bullwhip Danner is what he went by, and I still have the feeling that he had fashioned that handle for himself. But I suppose he had earned it over the years, leading emigrant wagon trains across the Plains to the West. It takes a lot of man to do that, and his passing was mourned by all who knew him, even those who hated his guts. I got plenty of dirty looks, for I was the one who finally put him under the sod. Of course, I knew none of that when I blew his lamp out. It wouldn’t have mattered if I had known: there was no time to discuss his good or bad points.
The funny thing was, he wasn’t even in the game that had caused the trouble. I’d been looking for some action. When a man folded and left the table, I’d asked if I could sit in. The others in the game gave me a quick look and, since I didn’t look like a sharper—though I can be—they grunted agreement and I took the empty chair.
In those days Independence, Missouri, was full of strangers. Some of the men at the table gave their names, or at least names of who they claimed to be. Back then, Independence was the jumping off place for the wagons going west, and the once-quiet farm town was jam—packed with citizens of every immoral persuasion, from regular farm folk to New York City throat-slitters trying to dodge the hangman. It was a wild, teeming town of gamblers, drummers, gun salesmen, gold seekers, deserters, foreigners, escaped convicts, whores, pimps and clergymen. You could stay in a dirty room for the same price they charged in a big city hotel. The town had had its day and then had died, but when it had been strong there was none stronger.
There was plenty of money on the table, and I liked that. Only one of the gamesters was a farmer. I think all he had in the world was in front of him, and you didn’t have to be a mind reader to know that he had sold his farm and was counting on going west a rich man. He wouldn’t; they never did. He was losing when I sat in, and he went on losing.
The others in the game were town men of various kinds. They were used to gambling, and they won and lost, and didn’t grunt any harder when they lost than when they won. All but one man, that is. He was a friend, or at least a partner, of the man I had to kill. No farmer, he had the look of a man who had done many things in his time, none of them all that well. I pegged him for a general wagon train worker, doing most anything that came up.
The card players who knew him addressed him as “Buffalo,” but always with a trace of humor, and that meant he liked to think of himself as a hunter, a provider of meat for the westbound pilgrims. Maybe he had shot a few buffalo in his time; they’re not hard to shoot for a man with a heavy rifle and a fairly steady hand. But I didn’t see him as any kind of professional meat-killer, because the real hunters are a breed apart, silent men usually, restless and dangerous, slow and ill tempered, hardly ever well liked.
This little man was nothing like that. I don’t say you have to be a big lanky man to kill buffs. It’s just that a certain size as well as a certain temperament seem to go with the job. “Buffalo” looked and sounded all wrong for the work he professed to do. He was short and quick in his movements, and had a tight smile pasted on his face all the time he was playing. A mug of beer stood in front of him, but he didn’t touch it except to wet his throat. I guess he needed to do that because he talked so much.
He drew my attention to the other man, the man who wasn’t in the game, the man I ended up killing. I’d seen him sitting at the next table when I sat in but didn’t think much about him. I think he must have moved the table with his belly, so he could sit in closer and listen to what was going on. What he was doing wasn’t good manners, yet there was nothing he could be called down for. Even so, if there had been something to criticize, it wouldn’t have been that easy. Because Bullwhip Danner was the kind of hunter the little man was not.
Back east in the Wild West magazines they have drawings of what they think various frontier types look like: the desperado with his villain’s drooping black mustache; the cavalry scout with long, yellow hair and buckskins. Bullwhip Danner was a sketch of a buffalo hunter come to life. He looked intrepid, manly as all get-out and his keen blue eyes would have been just fine, if they hadn’t been so dumb—and dangerous, because he knew he was dumb and didn’t like it. Glancing over at him, I didn’t doubt that he was a fine hunter; it was too bad he didn’t stick to what he knew best. He was all wrong as a financier, a backer of poker games played by men smarter than himself. That’s what he was doing, staking the quick-eyed, talky runt with the mug of warm beer.
I don’t know where they hatched the idea, probably some night out on the trail. So many men have schemes and systems for winning big at poker and other games. They watch cold-eyed professionals beating the wheel or raking in pots, and think they can do it. They should know that it takes money as well as nerve to win big. And luck has something to do with it, too.
Buffalo was short on all three items. There was money enough, but that’s all there was. I knew there was nothing in reserve. A good gambler always has something he can dig up when a game goes against him. If he’s known and respected, he can even go in the hole, because they know he’s good for it. Buffalo had no such credit working for him. He also varied his play, and that didn’t do any good.
After a while he started to sweat and stopped looking at his partner, who was putting away the whiskey pretty good while he watched his own savings go into other hands. The play went on, and I began to win. It took a while, but that’s what happened. Nothing unusual about that; after all, gambling is how I make most of my living. I do lots of other work, nearly all of it dangerous, but given a choice, I’ll take cards. When you play poker you get to work where it’s warm, and when you’re tired and rich enough or broke enough to quit, there is always a woman and a bed and a bottle to put life back into your bones.
I kept on winning. I could feel Danner’s eyes boring into me. I had become the villain of the place; I was making off with all his hard-earned money. For a hunter like Danner, knocking down the buffalo is easier than rooting out stumps, about the hardest grind there is after plowing, but it’s work just the same. In the old days, you could just set up a stand and kill the big bastards till kingdom come. Lately, though, with the herds scared off and thinned out, you’d have to work long days to put buffalo steaks on the table. And the folks won’t eat the big critters with hide and horns and hoofs still attached. You have to do all the skinning, cleaning and dressing before the meat is ready for the stewpot or the skillet.
The game had been going on for a lot longer than the time I was in it. Two hours after I joined in some of the players got up to piss or stretch their legs. The farmer, gloomy as any failed man, stayed at the table and ate slices of hard-smoked ham, of which he had a good supply in both pockets of his canvas coat. I drank whiskey and bought a cigar from the bartender and felt pretty good.
The town of Independence and what went on there, apart from the poker game, didn’t mean a thing to me. I was on my way to this wild new town called Dodge City, in Kansas. They said it was going to be bigger than St. Louis in a few years, and I wanted to take some money out of the place before it got too respectable. It was just as well that I never got there, though, because not long after the time I’m talking about a new, hard-nosed marshal named Dillon came to town and put the lid on everything.
Buffalo had moved to the next table and was getting hell from his partner. As Danner saw it, Buffalo was a horse’s cock and was playing his cards every which way but right. Now and then they stopped their argument and looked over at me. Buffalo just looked, but Danner glared. In the Southwest, certain Indian witchmen have the reputation of being able to put the evil eye on their enemies. I think Bullwhip Danner had been trying his level best to do that to me that day.
I guess the witchery didn’t work, because when we pulled in our chairs and the game went on, I kept winning. The farmer was the first to drop out. He went off to be murdered by his irate wife or to blow his brains out. Getting the nod, Buffalo folded and left the table. He managed to get one drink from Danner’s bottle before Danner grabbed it from him. The dumb son-of-a—bitch had failed to strike it big, and thirst was his punishment. I hoped Danner would leave himself when he finished the bottle. Instead, he called for a fresh one and proceeded to drown his disappointment. But his eyes grew angrier.
There was going to be trouble. How bad it was going to be depended on how hard Danner wanted to take his loss. Hard enough, I guessed. Guessed, hell! I knew how hard he was going to take it. What could I do about it? Not much. I don’t work hard to win money just so I can give it back because some gent is unhappy. If some gaming gent loses big to me, then I’m always willing to stake him for a few hundred, if he isn’t a professional, that is. Bullwhip Danner was all grown up and would have to make the best of it. Or the worst of it. I was ready for that, too. You have to be ready if you play for higher stakes than matchsticks.
Fact is, it wasn’t all that big a game, certainly not the kind people hang around waiting to see who comes out winners. Other games were going on without any undue excitement. The other men accepted my winning streak with the customary calm of veteran gamblers. They bought drinks and so did I. Nobody likes to lose, but you can’t win if you can’t bear to lose. A few sour jokes were made about all the money I was taking in, but nothing more than that. When one man left to get some sleep, he said he was going to clean me out the next time we met.
An hour later I had a pile of money in front of me and the game was over. I don’t know how much there was, maybe about four thousand dollars. Not a bad day’s work, but I’ve had better. Nothing happened until I began to shove the money together with both hands. That seemed to do it for Bullwhip Danner; it was the thought of all that money disappearing into my pocket that got him up on his feet. That by itself didn’t mean beans to me, but then I saw the bullwhip.
It didn’t hang from his holster behind the gun handle, the way some bullwhackers keep it. It hung from his belt, from a wide, steel hook set into the leather, and it wasn’t just an ordinary bullwhip but the kind made from rhino hide. I don’t know where they get the rhino hide they make them from, but they get made, and the men who carry them like to use them. These whips never wear out, and they never break, no matter how many years of use they get. You can kill with a whip like that—and I don’t mean death by flogging. It’s more like steel than hide and can lay open a man’s throat as neatly as a deep knife slash. One or two slices across the belly, and a man finds himself holding in his guts. I once heard of a man who lost his cock and balls to one of those things. It happened in a gold camp in western Australia.
That story jumped into my mind when Danner spoke in what I took to be an Australian accent. You don’t meet many Australians in this country. Those you do meet are always out in the West. Things get hot Down Under, and the West is the closest thing they can find to home.
Bullwhip Danner said, “You been having a right run of luck with the cards, haven’t you, cobber?”
“Cobber” was one of their words.
I stood up, having no mind to be bullwhipped sitting down. “Pretty good,” I said, sure there was no way in the world to walk away from this. Honest Injun, that’s what I wanted to do. I didn’t know the man, had no quarrel with him or with his runty friend, yet I knew I was going to get to know them better. It was like when you’re at a country dance and can’t get out of dancing with your ugly second cousin. You dance, but you don’t like it. You try to get through it as fast as you can. But this was one time when I couldn’t do my duty and then duck out on the porch and drink from the bottle hidden in the rain barrel.
“Better than pretty good, I’d say.” That was Danner’s idea of clever conversation. Bad men in Australia must be the same as our home-grown bad men. Bad men everywhere seem to think killing is like courtship. It has to be done like the Virginia Reel, all the right steps in the right places.
I could have shot him. It would have saved me a deep gash on my right forearm. I’d had to shoot him anyway, but right then I thought I could face him down or put a bullet in his whip arm. I didn’t pull a gun then because I keep my gun in my holster as much as I can. When it comes out, it comes out to kill. The killing habit is hard to break.
Anyway, for now it was just talk. Danner had a very loud voice that got on my nerves. Everyone seemed to know who he was, so I guess he had to put on a show. He was one of those hard cases who feel the need to explain why they’re doing something bad. I prefer bad men who just do it because they feel like it.
Danner reached out and clamped his hand on the shoulder of his little friend Buffalo. He used his left hand, not the whip hand. It must have hurt, because Buffalo screwed up his mouth in pain. He smiled nervously when the big hunter let him go. Then Buffalo moved away and, still grinning, wanted to see what was going to happen.
“I’m taking up for my friend here,” Danner bellowed. “Bloody fool got himself into a poker game and got fleeced. ‘Don’t do it, Buffalo, old mate,’ says I to him. Does he listen? Not on your tintype he don’t. Well, says I to meself, I’ll just hang about and see how the little fellow does. Sort of surprises me, is what he does. Ain’t doing bad at all as long as he’s handling the pasteboards with men he knows and trusts. Reg’lar fellers, you might say. Got a fighting chance, he does, till this cobber here shows up. Past that point, it’s all downhill for old Buffalo.”
One of the men who had been in the game, a tough-looking traveling salesman in a good suit, was standing at the bar with a drink in his hand. I remembered hearing him say that he was a drummer for a jewelry company in St. Louis. He knocked back his drink, but I knew it wasn’t to give him courage. For a city man, he looked good and tough.
“What’re you beefing about, my friend? It was a fair game.” He laughed and reached for another drink. “I ought to know. I been gaming for years.”
Danner didn’t look at him. “Keep out of this, city man. This is between me and the sharper.”
“Is that me?” I said. I should have shot him then. Men I know would have. Being called a sharper isn’t the same as being called a cheat. Usually sharper means a man who gambles for a living but who doesn’t advertise that fact with the black suit and fancy duds of the professional card mechanic. It means a lot of things to a lot of people. Sore losers hate sharpers—because they win.
“That’s what you are, sharper,” Danner said.
I still didn’t want to kill him. You get tired of killing men for what they say. Besides, Independence, for all its temporary wildness, was still a farmer town at heart and had good, strong laws. I didn’t want to hang around fighting bedbugs in the city jail while they got around to trying me for maiming or murder.
I was almost embarrassed by what I said next. “If your friend thinks he’s been dazzled, why doesn’t he send for the sheriff? Let him decide.”
Law-abiding me!
Danner laughed at that. He was drunk but steady on his feet. “Me and my friend are just simple wagon people,” he said. “Guiding good folks to California is what we do for a living. My little friend worked hard for his money, sharper. No need for the sheriff to be called—just give it back.”
It got quiet. “Not a chance,” I said. “He lost in a straight game. Be smart—let it go.”
My God, he was fast with that whip! If it had been uncoiled, I would have killed Danner when his hand moved. Instead, he sent the whip’s length back behind him. People behind him scattered, and someone cried out in pain. Now there were just three of us in the center of the saloon: me, Danner, and Buffalo. Buffalo was on Danner’s left, so he didn’t have to move away from the whip. I wondered why he stayed where he was. I should have figured that the big, wild Australian was his only friend, if that’s the right word for it. Maybe it was one of those strange partnerships: brute strength and weak brains.
“If that whip comes at me, I’ll kill you,” I said. “I won’t wing you, not now. There’s time to let it drop. You can’t beat a short gun.”
“So you say, cobber.” The Australian knew how good he was. I knew it too. The whip handle in his hand was no less deadly than if he’d been gripping the butt of a gun. And still I didn’t draw, because in a court of law it would be whip against gun. The prosecutor and the sheriff would check back on me and come up with some of the killings I’d done in my time, and when the law got through with me, I’d be marked as a killer who had gunned down a hard-working wagon-train man, whose only crime had been drinking too much liquor and a feeling that his friend had been cheated.
“You better pull on me,” Danner said, his whip hand motionless, the rhino hide snaked out behind him. “Got you shitting your pants, don’t I? You’re thinking, will he go for my hand or my eyes? How about the jugular? I can cut it across so it’ll gush like a broken pipe. What’re you afraid of? But I’ll tell you, cobber, no man can say Bullwhip Danner is an unmerciful cutter. Unbuckle your gun belt and your pants and shuffle over here with your unlawful gains. Do that, and maybe I’ll give you a dollar for a drink.”
I said nothing. I no longer wanted to walk away. Men have talked to me like that in the past; most of them are dead. A few I let live because they were just drunk, or foolish or crazy. You have to be careful about the men you let live. They have to be harmless or plain crazy. To kill such men does more harm to your reputation than letting them run off at the mouth. A dangerous man is altogether different; as a rule, you have to kill him, even if you don’t especially want to.
I was in a bind, and good old Buffalo got me out of it by pulling a gun on me while I was watching the whip. Maybe the slug of whiskey made him do it. His hand snaked inside his coat and came out with a stubby revolver and he nearly got to fire it. My gun came out and knocked him down, but then the whip snapped my gun out of my hand with the force of a bullet. The whip cracked again and caught my gun while it was still skittering across the floor. I jerked my head to one side as the whip snapped straight at my eyes. It split the flesh on my forearm. Blood came with the pain, and I backed away with blood dripping from my hand, the whip snaking and snapping at my face. My ass hit the edge of a table and Danner yelled, thinking he had me where he could cut me up. The whip cracked an inch from my eye.
But then the city drummer yelled and threw me a short-barreled, double-action .38. The whip cracked at the gun as it sailed through the air. It missed. I caught it with my left hand and gave Danner four of the five small-caliber pills in the cylinder. You never saw a man more surprised, as all four bullets got him in the chest, in and around his heart. It was the fourth bullet that drilled through. Until then he was still moving at me, wounded but still on his feet. The one in the heart stopped him in his tracks, and he keeled over and died before he hit the floor. A foul stench filled the room as he voided his bowels.
But Buffalo wasn’t dead. Though badly wounded, he tried to crawl toward the gun he had dropped. I got to it before he did and threw it away. The little man stopped crawling. His eyes rolled back in his head. Blood leaked from a hole in his chest, but no blood was mixed in the spit that dribbled from his mouth, so it looked like his lungs hadn’t been damaged. I didn’t care what shape his innards were in; if I hadn’t been forced to fire so fast, I would have blown a hole in his head.
The drummer stepped forward to claim his gun, unmindful of the sour looks he was getting from the gamblers and the drinkers. I thought he was one dandy drummer; there was a real man underneath the big belly and the loud suit and the jowly face, baby-ass pink from hot towels in barbershops. I guessed he was a Jew. I didn’t know much about Jews, but I liked this one.
Handing him back his .38, I said, “Thanks for the use of the weapon.”
He said his name was Jacob Steiner, and we shook hands. “I could have shot him for you, but I thought you’d rather do it yourself.” Steiner prodded the empty shells out of his gun and reloaded it before putting it in a shoulder holster under his coat.
Some of the drinkers pushed two tables together and put Buffalo aloft to wait for the doctor. His breathing was light and shallow. The blood from the bullet hole was dyeing his shirt a dark red.
Steiner told the barkeep to set out a bottle and clean glasses. “I should be buying,” I said. “Who was that I just killed?”
Steiner slid the bottle towards me. “You mean you don’t know? Me, I’m just a bauble salesman, but I know Bullwhip Danner. Knew him. They say he was one hell of a hunter and troubleshooter. He said it a lot himself. The name means nothing to you?”
Steiner drank good whiskey, and the bottle had his name on it—always a good sign. “I guess I heard it once or twice”, I said. “How did he manage to live so long?” Steiner raised his glass. “Your health, sir. Our late friend lasted so long because he thought he couldn’t be killed by mortal man. I guess he’d been scouting and hunting with the wagons about five years. A determined sort of a man. He wanted to be a scout but didn’t know beans about the country, being a foreigner. You know what the bastard did?”
“Bought that rhino whip?”
Steiner laughed. “I guess he brought that from Australia. What he did was to cross the Plains from California all by himself. Fought off Indians, got lost, all but starved. But he got to know the Plains pretty good. Folks here didn’t take him too serious, him a foreigner. Then he convinced some hard-up train to give him his first job. The next five years he got as good as the best. Better, in his own opinion.”
I grinned at the tough Jew. “You almost make me sorry I killed him, a man with such pluck and determination.” Steiner grinned back. “Don’t be. That dead man was a son-of-a-bitch. No better man on the trail, but he was loud, stupid, and always looking for a fight.”
I was thinking about the sheriff. He’d be there soon. “You know this town. How do you think this will go over?”
They said Jews don’t drink. This one hadn’t heard about that. He was putting two away for my one. “You won’t even be charged,” he said. “That doesn’t mean they’ll pin a medal on you. You’d think a brute like Danner wouldn’t be popular. If you did, you’d be wrong. Bullwhip—such a name!—was what they call a colorful character. Besides, the wagon people need all the good men they can find.”
Everybody turned to look at me when the sheriff and two hard, young deputies came in.