Chapter 19

New Rules

“You still owe me five bucks!” Red said angrily.

“I don’t know what you’re on about,” Spiffy insisted.

“Don’t give me that hogwash. You know damn well what I’m on about. When you was playin’ stud with that buck-toothed kid, you didn’t have the coin to cover his bet. You showed me a couple kings like they was the best hand in the world and asked for five bucks. I loaned it to ya, and Lucky beat you with triple eights.”

“Aw, that didn’t count! That was before we knew he was some kinda mind reader. Shit, I wouldn’t bet against him now even if I had four aces.”

“It don’t matter what you know now. That’s why they call it gamblin’! You still owe me five bucks, and I’m gonna get it even if I have to take it out of your pocket after I put a few more holes in that fancy suit of yours.”

Spiffy didn’t bother responding. Ever since Buddy sent Red’s gang to hell, everyone knew he was yellow. Every day he drank himself cockeyed just to put off going up against Buddy. His empty threat was swallowed up by the clatter of the saloon.

Four new cowboys had come in that morning, and they were all roistered up and shouting over one another. They’d ate a batch of tainted beef while on a roundup. It turned putrid in their saddlebags, but they were too stingy to slaughter a steer and cut into their profits. They suffered some weeks with blood coming out of both ends as they tried to bring in the herd. When they couldn’t mount their horses anymore, the cattle strayed off. Nearest town was over a hundred miles. As they weakened, the coyotes grew bolder, and it was clear they wouldn’t be able to fend them off much longer. Decided it was better to go quick and end their misery, so they pointed their guns at one another and pulled the triggers on the count of three. Now that they were dead, they were pleased as punch just to be able to hold anything down. Sal kept their glasses full all day long.

“Ain’t them boys drank up their credit by now?” I asked.

“Oh, they’re all right,” he replied, which was suspicious because Sal didn’t think anybody was all right.

“I noticed they all got new Remingtons, too.”

“Everyone in the room’s heeled,” Sal defended. “Why should them boys be any different?”

“They wasn’t heeled when they come in this morning, and they ain’t played any poker yet, so somebody must’ve given them those pistols. What are you scheming at, Sal?”

“Me?”

“Wouldn’t have anything to do with Buddy telling you to feed that geezer for free, would it?”

He just brushed me off. “I don’t know what you’re on about.”

Buddy had been knocking back the bug juice at a hardy pace. He stood in front of the bar, peacefully swaying in his boots. Looked to be feeling about as good as a dead man can feel. He wasn’t the truculent sort, unless he was bawling out a logger for disrespecting Ms. Parker or battling a rack of ribs for bites between its narrow bones. One of the rotten beef eaters came by him in a hurry. The fella still had some heft to him, despite the sickness that had done him in. He bumped hard against Buddy’s shoulder with the kind of force that should be immediately followed by either an apology or a fistfight. Then he gave Buddy the stink eye, as if he’d been in the wrong.

Buddy wasn’t eating drag dust over it though. He just dipped his hat and bowed as if he’d collided with the queen of England, then said, “Pardon me, ma’am.”

Some men within earshot laughed, which caused the cowboy to redden.

“Don’t sass me!” he scolded, and shoved Buddy, who was so drunk he had to squint to see. He stumbled backward but kept on smiling as he caught himself on a stool.

“That how you greet folks where you come from?” Buddy asked cheekily as he regained his footing. “Keep your muck forks off of me.”

The man threw a punch. Buddy stepped back to dodge the blow, but wasn’t quick enough. It glanced off his cheek, and he winced from the sting. A shove was one thing, but a punch was a whole different matter. Buddy palmed the cowboy’s face like a bowling ball and shoved him straight to the floor. The cowboy wasn’t quick to rise, but once he got up he started pounding Buddy’s stomach, where his wound never fully mended. Buddy drew his gun in a hurry but didn’t shoot. Instead, he jammed the barrel down the man’s throat, breaking his two front teeth, and tried to reason with him.

“Now see here, mister,” Buddy yelled. “I ain’t accustomed to shootin’ men that ain’t pulled on me, but I ain’t gonna spend all night trading blows with you. You got two choices. Either go out to the road and draw or walk away, ’cause I had enough. What’ll it be?”

Buddy extracted the barrel from between the cowboy’s bloodied lips. He spat out some broken teeth and answered, “The road.”

Everyone lined the rotted-out boardwalk to watch, except Sneaky Jim, but losing a sip of your drink was a fair price to see a decent gunfight. As Buddy stood in the center of the road waiting, the cowboy conferred with his buddies. Buddy didn’t need any advice on aiming and shooting, so he chewed on a piece of straw and gazed drunkenly at the cloud cover.

“I hearda you,” the cowboy said as he worked the stiffness out of his holster. “You robbed a stagecoach, then shot up some lawmen. They say you got sent here instead a hell ’cause you was careful ’bout not killin’ anyone who didn’t draw on you first.”

“I hearda you, too,” Buddy said.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yer name’s shit-for-brains, and you came to Damnation so I can send your ass to hell today.”

They took their places back to back in the center of the road. Sal began counting to ten, but the cowboy was not an honorable man. At the count of six, he turned and steadied his barrel across his wrist. The three other cowboys who had eaten tainted beef were in the crowd at Buddy’s back. Sure enough, they stepped forward and pulled their guns, too.

I wasn’t heeled, but the logger beside me had a sidearm within reach. I probably could’ve grabbed it and gunned down one or two to even the odds. I’d already gone ten months without shooting anyone though. The possibility of heaven was harder to give up now. Just two more months and I might be saved, or at least know it wasn’t possible. After all the turning the other cheek I’d done, I was starting to dream about shooting every loudmouthed bastard that got in my face. Still, odds weren’t in my favor. Even if I picked off two of the cowboys, there wasn’t much chance of Buddy dodging the other two guns already trained on his back with their triggers half squeezed.

Buddy must’ve heard the metal barrels leaving leather, because he started counting aloud, drowning out Sal’s voice. And when he got to nine, he just kept on saying it over and over, and taking extra-long steps as he did. Must’ve walked ten paces, just saying, “Nine, nine, nine...” Then he finally turned and drew.

Buddy might’ve been stink-eyed drunk when he came outside, but it sobered him up real quick to have steel in hand and his survival at stake. As he swiveled forward, he crouched at the same time, like a nimble little ballerina with a cannonball beer gut. The first bullet had real meaning to it. He sent it straight through the chest of the man in the center of the road, like he wanted to make sure he got his point across.

As he fell, the three other men all fired at once. Nobody else in the crowd pulled. Like myself, they must’ve wrote Buddy off and didn’t want to get on the bad side of the winner. Hardin was the only one with enough grit and speed to take them all out anyway. Seeing Buddy facing four men brightened his day. He smiled as the cowboys fired. Likely on account of the extra paces Buddy had taken, all three missed their mark. Hardin frowned. Buddy fired twice more before they had a chance to re-aim.

I’d read a few dime novels about gunslingers and found them all to be wrong about the same thing. It is not the thought of hitting a live target that throws amateurs off. During a gunfight, most first timers do not anticipate how distracted they will be by the sound of their own gun and the echo of their opponent’s. They imagine that their hands will be steady, and they will strike their target like the tin cans they have practiced on. They do not anticipate how difficult it will be to concentrate on firing a second shot in the thick of it. And the ones who ain’t never shot a gun before are certain to be startled by the loudest noise they ever heard just two feet away from their ears.

Two cowpunchers dropped to the ground at once, both with bullets in their hearts and mouthfuls of dust as their last meals. The fourth man got off a second shot. It shattered a window of the rooming house down the road and some fifteen feet above Buddy’s head.

“Ain’t ya even tryin’ to hit me?” Buddy scolded as he stepped forward with his gun at his side. “Let me get this straight. You got four on one, and you don’t even wait till the count of ten. Hell! I’m flabbergasted.” He looked at the man in disgust. “Clearly we can’t have any kind of— what’d the vampire call?—harmonious society with people like you around.”

With that, he fired two bullets into the rotten beef-eater’s face. Hardin wasn’t smiling any longer. He turned and went back into the bar before the Chinaman dragged the bodies to the pigpen.

A couple of newbies fought over the dead men’s guns. Sal just gritted his teeth, not being able to claim the weapons since then Buddy’d know he put them up to it.

“So, you decided if you wanna be sheriff or not?” I asked Buddy.

“I suppose I ain’t fit for the job,” he admitted. “Need somebody who drinks less and won’t get drawn into this kinda bullshit.” He turned and walked over to the hotel.

“Where’s he going?” Sal asked.

“I reckon he’s gonna consult the vampire,” Red said. “Everyone else in this town sits around drinking all day and fights over nothin’.”

Just after supper, Buddy returned to the Foggy Dew with a hammer and a cowhide under his arm. He unrolled it and nailed it to a beam beside the bar so that the fur was facing the wall. On the skin side was written:

Rules

1. Everybody eats.

2. No raping or killing Ms. Parker.

3. No shooting a man that ain’t heeled.

4. No back shooting.

5. No killing over dumb shit.

6. The vampire decides whether or not it’s dumb shit.

7. If the vampire ain’t around, Buddy decides whether or not it’s dumb shit, less he’s real drunk.

8. If Buddy’s real drunk, don’t start no dumb shit cause he’ll prolly kill y’all anyway.

Nigel wasn’t officially declared the sheriff or anything. He didn’t want the responsibility of policing men, but it let folks know the pecking order. Hardin glanced up at the rules. His bottom lip curled in disfavor, then he spat some chewing tobacco on the floor and went back to his dice game without a word.

Sal had hoped the notion of free grub would blow over, but it was hard to ignore it written in big letters as the first rule on the wall, and with the backing of the vampire. He wasn’t the first to vent his disagreement though. A squeaky voice chirped up from the back of the room, “The wolves are probably gonna come in here and tear us all to pieces any day now, and you’re posting rules!” We all turned, surprised to find Whiny Pete was doing the talking. The tears on his cheeks showed that the words weren’t spoke in anger, but fear. He did give voice to everyone’s main concern, and we were curious for a reply.

“Ah, them wolves might come after us in an hour, or it could be ten years…” Buddy said. “Ain’t mean we gotta live like a bunch a savages just ’cause we’re gonna go to hell eventually.”

The room remained quiet as folks considered it in earnest.

“Shit, for a lot of you fellas, this ain’t much different from when you was alive,” Buddy continued. “Y’all hid out among the willows most days with a bounty on your head and the prospect of a rope necktie not far off. What’s the use a goin’ on like this? Everybody shootin’ each other over nothin’. Ain’t no way to live… Or rather, ain’t no way to pass the time while you’re dead. Can’t get no peace! We might as well see if Tom’s on the right path with his pacifist ways. Hell, after a year’s time, we could all march through the gates of heaven together. Just think… a hundred rotten outlaws up there in the clouds, playin’ poker with the saints—and Sneaky Jim stealin’ sips from angels whenever they get up to piss. We’d shake things up!”

Red was the first to break the silence with a loud cackle, and the rest quickly joined in till nearly everyone in the room was doubled over in fits of laughter.

“Ah, suit yourself,” Buddy said. “Alls I know is I ain’t gonna listen to nobody beg for food no more.” He stormed out of the saloon. After the laughter died down, folks had to discuss the rules seriously. Couldn’t just disregard what the fastest gun and the vampire said. Sal was quietly collecting glasses around the room. He still hadn’t replaced Stumpy with a new barback. There were plenty of men willing to do the job, but he seemed happy for the excuse to get away from the bar.

“The way I see it, them rules only hold if someone’s around to enforce ’em,” Red said.

“Buddy’ll enforce ’em,” I said.

“Don’t be so sure,” Spiffy argued. “He’s making enemies a man who likes to bend his elbow can’t afford to have. Jack only lasted as long as he did ’cause he hardly drank in a town full of drunks.”

“He’s right,” Red said. “Sooner or later, Buddy’ll get sloppy, and the guy preparing the grub has a pretty good reason to see him sent to hell. Takes a lot of energy to be on the lookout for hired guns all the time.”

“Sal already tried that with them four cowboys and failed,” I said. “If he fails again, Buddy’s likely to figure it out.”

“So what’s Sal’s next move then?” Red asked. “You reckon he’s just gonna lay over and forget about how he was slighted?”

“Not sure what his next move is,” I said. “But Sal ain’t one to forget a slight.”

We reckoned nothing more was going to be said about the matter, at least for the night, so it wasn’t worth speculating about. Strong convictions often lost steam between the last whiskey of the night and the first beer of the morning. A short while later though, Sal climbed up on top of a stool. He reckoned he should get out ahead of the issue before folks started thinking he didn’t have no more authority in town.

“Gather ’round everyone. I have an announcement to make,” he called out. “From now on, there will be no charge for food.” Everybody cheered. “One more thing,” he added, “drinks will now be four bits instead of two.”