Starting back for Mariposa I knew I might have to ride through many towns before I found McCarty. At the time Westfall soaked me with water the kid had been gone for the best part of an hour. Now it was closer to two hours; too late to hurry. It would have been easier for McCarty to shoot me than to crack me on the head. I thought I knew why he hadn’t done it: killing a man with a sneaky bullet in front of a witness wasn’t part of the legend the crazy bastard was trying to build up around his name.
I didn’t hurry for two reasons. One, it was probably too late to stop him from killing Saxbee and anybody else he could find. Two: I didn’t push my horse along the darkened trail because the kid might be having second thoughts about me. Maybe he figured I was the only one who would take the trouble to mark him for a liar and a murderer. Coming from somebody like me that might not altogether spoil the dime novel portrait he wanted to paint with blood and gunsmoke. But it could cast doubts.
So I rode easy, listening more than looking because there wasn’t much to see with oily-black clouds rolling across the moon. My horse whickered at some sound—the next sound was the hammer thumbed back on my .44—but when the faint crunching noise started again, it was nothing but a ground-nesting bird.
Five miles of flat country without good cover stretched between the ranch and the boundary wire. Not a good place to stage an ambush—and maybe he thought I was counting on that. But any place is a good place if a man doesn’t expect to be shot, so for a good part of the way I stayed off the trail. Nothing happened by the time I got to the wire.
There, the word was that McCarty had gone through. Well over an hour before; the answer wasn’t too friendly. The fence rider who told me was kind of respectful about the kid. Yesterday the same feller would have made jokes about McCarty, the way he looked. Fast gun or not, there would have been some discussion about McCarty and women. If he could handle a woman—or would want to? Now all that was set aside because the kid was riding out alone to take on Saxbee and his killers.
That’s how Saxbee’s ranch hands were spoken of when I went through the wired gate. A bunch of hired killers!
Most of Saxbee’s men—like Sam’s—were still drunk, or still drinking, or still sleeping it off. But that’s how legends get started.
About a mile outside the wire the country was still flat but rocky and crisscrossed with gullies. I rode by the place where I had held off Saxbee’s riders; later I crossed the ridge where I had saved McCarty’s life by killing two men I didn’t know. I’m not much for apologies, but maybe those two men had one coming.
Before I got to the dip in the trail where Sam got killed I rode out from the trail, got down and came in quiet with the Winchester in my hand. Nothing happened and after that I got impatient to be dragging my friend Tex at the end of a rope. Looping and dragging him back to be hung was something I meant to do. Some of the cold hate I had was for me; mostly it was for fat Sam Blatchford. That belly-stuffing woman-jumping selfish old man would let women and children die if it meant saving his own life. Sure he would. Even so, he was better than some men I know, and he deserved a better end than to be shot by a rabid rat from the city sewers. I was late getting started, and it was too bad about the men McCarty was fixing to kill, but how Saxbee and the others ended their lives was no concern of mine.
I made good time on the last five miles to Mariposa, and if it hadn’t been so dark the town wouldn’t have looked so bright from so far away. The town was just one street in a shallow basin, its only reason for being the good spring water that bubbled at the south end. That’s how I went in, riding out wide and starting back from the south end. I could hear the jangling of the mechanical piano in the one saloon. The jerking tinny music went up between the two lines of buildings and lost itself in the black night sky. I hate those god blasted noise makers, but I can keep myself from putting a bullet through their metal gizzards when there are other sounds to soften the nerve-rattling music. On that night, in Mariposa, there were no other sounds.
Still out past the light, I could see the street, except there was nothing to see. Nothing to see and nothing to hear except that loco music box. In the deadest town in the lonesomest part of the Territory you could expect to see one or two horses hitched in front of a saloon. Not here; there was nothing. Mariposa was like a ghost town with the lights lit.
I came in easy. When I got close to the light I climbed down and put a double hitch on my horse. There was more cover on the boardwalk, and more noise no matter how soft I walked, so I stayed in the packed dirt and sand of the street. I had the Winchester ready to kill, and that was kind of odd, because I wouldn’t kill McCarty unless he was an inch from killing me. And maybe he’d have to be closer than that before I shot lead through him.
I kept walking, and I kept the same pace though nobody as much as ducked a head and looked scared. Down at the saloon, looking clearer now as I got farther into the bright, misty light, the piano was having trouble switching from one tune to another. Between the last music and the next I heard a sobbing breathy sound like an old man trying to blow up a pig bladder, and not getting too far.
It was coming from a busted-open door on the right side of the boardwalk. It moved and I saw the flash of light on bright metal. Flat in the dirt, the rifle ready, I heard the same sound, and not even the smartest Apache can imitate a dying man that well. I moved back, then got up, and edged along the front of a building that looked like a dry goods store. I got next to the busted in door; the sound hadn’t changed.
Maybe the dying deputy had been with Deegan, that day at Sam’s place. No way to tell now, not with the top of his chest and some of his face shot away. I didn’t know—still don’t know—who he was. He was tough, or he wouldn’t have lasted that long. I figured McCarty had used only one barrel on this feller, and he must have been in a hurry because he hadn’t hit him dead center.
He was no friend of mine, but I used the knife on him before I moved on. His eyes were thanking me when I put the point of the Bowie above his heart, then drove it through with the heel of my other hand. He wanted to die and so he wasn’t hard to kill. The muscle shuddering went on for a while, but he was long and mercifully dead by the time I pulled out the Bowie and wiped the broad blade on his shirt.
The player piano had righted itself and was ripping through “Them Golden Slippers” when I eased back into the street. Well, you have to know the deadest town in the world’s got itself at least one yapping dog. At first I thought the little beastie was snapping his gums at me. But he wasn’t, and he wasn’t much of a dog, and he came snarling down from the other end of the street. That little dog was small and jumping with indignation. I don’t know where he came from, why he came hopping at that particular time, and don’t think I’m soft about animals, because I’m not. I’m not—but I felt worse about the dog than the deputy when a shotgun blast, both barrels, fired from a window upstairs over the saloon blew that little mongrel into smithereens.
The window shade was pulled down half way, and in the dim light I saw McCarty’s shadow as he moved back into the middle of the room. Either he was talking to himself, or there was somebody in there with him. What he was saying must have been pretty funny, because he laughed a lot. I call that sound a laugh because I have to call it something. It was high pitched, almost a whinny. He stopped laughing and I heard the shotgun being snapped open, the clatter of empty shells on the floor.
A dead man with a deputy’s badge on his chest lay in the shadows beside the jail. The gun still clutched in his hand hadn’t done him much good. The shotgun blast had hit him low, had just about cut him in half. I heard McCarty coming downstairs and I was across the street with my back against the wall beside the swinging doors before he got all the way down. Another corpse lay on its face, half in, half out of the saloon. The buckshot splintered doors stopped me from seeing more than his boots. I didn’t have to see more than that to know who he was. Deegan had boots like that, Mexican boots with some kind of silver work around the heels.
I edged closer to the door, feeling with my toe for loose boards. Inside the saloon, McCarty was talking to somebody who didn’t keep up his end of the conversation. “What you did wasn’t smart, wasn’t polite,” the kid remarked in a mild voice. “Rule One, friend, never get in a busy man’s way.”
I swear I never made a sound, but suddenly the kid broke off his one-sided conversation. Maybe ten seconds later he called out, “You out there, Carmody?”
I didn’t say a word. He said it again. “Don’t play fox with Tex McCarty. I don’t think you’re out there—I know.”
So far as my counting went, three men were dead, and I knew the tally would climb higher than that. I don’t usually mix feelings with killing, because that can be fatal in my business, but this rat-brained city bred killer was an exception. I can understand killing for money or revenge, or because the killer is wild with whisky. With men like that I’d be merciful and use a bullet. To put a bullet in McCarty might not be all that easy—he had to be as gun expert as he bragged or those three men, probably more, wouldn’t be laying dead. But damn me for a stubborn Texas fool, I meant to see that young weasel hang.
“You coming in or not, Carmody? No cause for us to get surly about this.” McCarty stopped to listen before he went on. “Sure you’re mad cause I whacked you on the head. Had to do it, friend. Had to do it—you could’ve got in the way.”
A wind driven ball of tumbleweed came rasping along the empty boardwalk and plastered itself against my legs. I let it stay there, thinking if I moved fast I could bring down the son of a bitch without killing him. I kept listening for the sound of twin hammers going back on McCarty’s shotgun.
McCarty said without moving, “I’m getting tired of this pussyfooting. You come on in—or go to hell. What you doing here anyways? Too late for you to do a damn thing. I took care of just about everybody had anything to do with Mr. Blatchford. All but one.”
Well, I thought, why not? “You mean that for me, Tex?”
McCarty didn’t even sound surprised to get an answer after all that talking. More than the killing of Sam, that convinced me that he was crazy. But not crazy like somebody who stands on corners and shows the ladies what he’s got. And not crazy like all those loose brained fellers who think they’re President Garfield.
Before he spoke McCarty let me hear that crazy womanish giggle. “No such notion, you and me are on the same side. Now you stop this foolishness, come in and have a drink. That’s all right. The owner just died and willed me the saloon. Ain’t going to be no shooting, that’s a promise.”
“No need to be,” I called back.
“Not a bit,” the kid said. “No gunplay and no hard feelings.”
“Coming in,” I said, thinking it just might work, the kid as crazy as he was. Close enough, I could bend a gun barrel over his head or, failing that, put a bullet in both arms. I stomped my feet and reached out to push the door with the muzzle of the Winchester. A blast from one barrel blew the door off the hinges, and when I jerked back the rifle there were nicks in the barrel.
I did more stomping, thinking he might take the sound for a falling body. But rats and human killers have a nose for tricks. “Didn’t work, did it?” the kid called. “Wouldn’t have no respect for you if it did. Ought to have killed me when my arm was still bad. Now it’s too late.”
If I had to do it I’d kill the bastard—and the hell with my promise to a dead fat man. Watching the saloon door I backed down from the boardwalk. From the sound of his voice he was standing right in the middle of the empty barroom, and there was a chance of shooting under the swinging doors—to get him in the legs if he held still long enough. But he was too foxy for that, and by the time I got out far enough he had moved out of sight. I figured he had gone to the safe end of the bar, or around behind it.
He started up again with his bragging. “Everything you try I’m ahead of you, Carmody. You want to kill me—come on in. If not, then ride away from here and let me get on with my business.”
I moved back to the wall of the saloon. The mass slaughter he had worked on Mariposa seemed to have pushed McCarty that last inch to the edge, then over it. What I had to do was to knock some of the cockiness out of him; get him rattled. I don’t recall what he said next. I didn’t have to yell hard to make myself heard:
“I want to see you hang, Tex. What you did here, you got to hang. Think on that. No glory, no big name, no legend. Just you and the hangman and six feet of dirt in your face. They won’t plant you in Boot Hill with decent folks. No mound, no marker, just a rough-dug hole out on the desert … ”
I stopped to let him get mad, but he didn’t do anything. Sam wouldn’t have liked how I was treating that poor homeless boy-killer. I thought a badly managed hanging was about right for him. I hoped he’d dangle blue-faced until they had to crawl under the gallows and pull hard on his legs.
“You hear me, Tex? I’m going to sit you out and wait you out. You want to change that—there’s a way. You come to me, sonny. Maybe you’ll get lucky and kill me. If I kill you—you’ll still be lucky. Better than the rope.”
Suddenly he let fly with a storm of dirty names that could get a book burned. Listening to him was like going back to the day I first crossed that night-crawler’s trail, and I could just about see his grinning mask of a face as the spit flew with the bad language. Then, just as quickly, he left off the cursing and yelled, “That’s a son of a bitching thing to say to any man … ”
He gave out more a scream than a yell when the piano started up without warning. It had stopped of its own accord; now it was off again. McCarty gave that wild cry and killed the piano with two quick shots. He got both shots off in less than a second, then put two more through what was left of the bat-wing door. I wasn’t anywhere near the door when he fired.
Wooden crates were stacked high in the alley between the saloon and the general store. I climbed fast, got a grip on the top rail of the balcony that fronted the saloon, and pulled myself over. Going through a room to the upstairs landing I heard him yelling right under my feet. When I eased open the door the first thing I saw was Noah Saxbee doubled over on a blood soaked bed. The old man’s six-shooter was still in its holster on the back of a chair. Judging from the mess, it looked like friend Tex had used more than a double blast of buckshot on the old man. That figured.
The hallway was nothing but bare boards and I had to move like a man with nitro in his hip pocket. In the room next to Saxbee’s a dead whore was jammed into a corner like a kid trying to hide from a thunderstorm. Her head was turned away from the door, as if she didn’t want to see what was coming through it. This once, the kid had been a real gentleman; no bloody shotgun blast, just a small neat hole in her left temple.
I got to the end of the hallway where it became a balcony hung over the barroom. McCarty wasn’t where I thought he would be. If he’d been quicker, or if I wasn’t so shy of scatterguns, my head would have been blown away in a fan shaped cloud of buckshot. He was behind a heavy, upturned gaming table. The blast ripped through wood and plaster and I went crashing back with eyes burning with dirt. Trying to rub the muck out of my eyes, I heard the shotgun snapping open, the hollow pop of fresh shells going in.
My eyes burned and watered, and if McCarty had nerve enough to finish the job he could have made a run for the stairs and done it in seconds. At first I thought that’s what he was doing, because he fired another blast of buckshot. He aimed low and blew away a big section of railing. That one did no damage to me, but I still couldn’t see well enough to shoot straight if he came up the stairs.
He yelled something I didn’t understand, and then I heard him making a break for the back door. I let him go; for a few minutes I was glad to let him go. The back door banged open. I tried to listen for sounds, but the only sound was the faint squealing of rusty hinges as the wind blowing through the empty saloon caused the back door to swing back and forth.