Ed Gorman
Ed Gorman’s credits are well known. He has won numerous awards in multiple genres, including a Western Writers of America Spur Award for Best Short Story. His newest western novel is Gun Truth. Here he infuses his western story with just a touch of the eerie quality you’d find in his horror stories. The results: another signature Gorman tale.
In all my active years as a Ranger, I fired my gun for official business only twice, once to startle a couple of drunken cowboys away from firing any more shots into a store-front window. I don’t have to tell you how cowboys are when they’ve come to town for a weekend of fun.
The other time was to kill Clayt Monroe. Yes, that Clayt Monroe…I took his Colt .45 from his dead hand.
I’m retired now. Retired earlier than I wanted to be because a neighbor of mine, a man named Av Caulder, was caught one night in my barn making love to my wife. I was the one who caught them. For three days I was cold. I don’t mean that in just an emotional sense, either. I mean in a physical sense. Even though it was a boiling Texas summer, when I went to the line shack to get away from my house and my wife, I couldn’t get warm. I felt as if I was dying. A part of me didn’t mind that prospect at all.
Mae and Caulder had seen me come into the barn. They jumped up, throwing clothes on, Mae calling out to me, pleading, begging for me to listen. But I hadn’t even had time to unsaddle after six hot days and nights of tracking a pair of bank robbers. I just got on my horse and rode off to the line shack.
When I finally did return home, I told Mae that I never wanted to talk about it, that I knew I had to be at least partly responsible because of my long absences from home—a few times I’d been gone two months into the vastness—and that for the sake of our boys, we needed to stay together. She said that it had only happened twice and happened out of loneliness rather than any love for her part for Caulder and that she prayed that someday I could forgive her.
Caulder…well, he was the sort who told everybody. He slept with a lot of married women and loved to brag on it. Everybody knew within twenty-four hours that he’d slept with Mae. In town I was looked at either as a fool who wouldn’t defend his honor—a Ranger has enemies and they delight in the misery and humiliation of others—or such a pathetic fool I’d believe what a lying slattern of a woman told me just because I loved her so blindly.
It wasn’t easy walking those streets at first, but winter came and then spring and then another summer and it was someone else’s bad luck to play the fool for the town…and so my circumstances began to fade.
While the marriage wasn’t what it had been, we shared the same bed again and there were those blessed days when I didn’t once have a picture of Mae and Caulder in the barn that night.
Then Mae died from heart disease. I took her to three different docs in the area, but not a one of them could do anything for her. At least she went fast. This time I wasn’t cold. In the middle of the full moon night, the cry of the coyote a kind of forlorn music, I’d kneel by her grave and weep because I missed her so damned much and loved her so damned much, and blamed the both of us for what had gone so wrong back there with Caulder.
A few weeks before she died, she asked me to sell, bury, destroy—she didn’t care which—the Colt .45 I’d taken from Clayt Monroe’s dead hand. She said she never felt comfortable being around a gun that had killed so many people. I said I couldn’t I said that it was worth a lot of money and that was money our two sons, now grown, could split up when I passed, which probably wouldn’t be all that long. I also said there wasn’t any doubt that this was Clayt Monroe’s Colt .45—got his initials carved on both sides of the barrel.
You know about Clayt Monroe, the gunfighter who didn’t want any law on him after he killed a man, so he always asked a sheriff or a deputy to be present when the gunfight took place. Right before Monroe and his opponent squared off, Monroe always asked the sheriff to pronounce this a legal gunfight. And the lawman always did. Hell, he wanted to see the great, grand Clayt Monroe in action as much as everybody else did.
Clayt Monroe officially killed thirty-eight men in nine years. He killed them in Missouri just after the war, in Nebraska and Colorado over a three-year period following that. And finally in Texas, where he spent the last four years of his life with a pretty dark-haired wife named Linda. Folks who knew Monroe said that he killed at least six men because of Linda. They will tell you, and I have no reason to disbelieve them, that Monroe’s jealousy was a sickness with him. That he would tear apart saloons, picnics, baseball games, and any other public gathering if he suspected that anybody had slighted Linda in some way. Or, God forbid, had made some sort of flirtatious advance toward her.
Monroe ended up his life in cattle country, owning a large operation with his brother Deke. When he’d grown up, cattle country had been open range, the way the Spaniards had preferred it, but now he saw that the fenced-range type had its advantages. He settled down with Linda. But it didn’t take long for Linda to realize what Monroe actually had in mind.
Now, for this time and place in Texas, Linda was a cultured girl. She’d spent several years in a finishing school before her daddy, a man who was at best marginally respectable, went broke in a gold-mine scheme he’d set up himself. She played piano and painted quite seriously; and the ballet lessons she’d taken had left her with a love for dance of just about any kind. She was a proper girl and a devoted Methodist, and while she wanted children and a responsible life, she also wanted, upon occasion, to have fun. To travel the ten miles to the nearest town and do a little shopping and maybe spend time with some of the women she saw only on Sundays at church. And there were Saturday-night dances. Nobody could say barn dances were immoral or improper—well, there are probably some who would, but cranks and crocks are just something you have to suffer in this vale of tears—and so she saw nothing wrong with dragging her husband along to them.
Monroe saw a lot wrong with barn dances, a friend of his told me, repeating what Monroe had once told him one drunken night. No matter how modestly she dressed, and she always dressed modestly, Linda was going to attract the male eye. She attracted the female eye too, but that was out of jealousy. Monroe, as I understand it, had two fears. One was that she would dance with another man and this would make Monroe look like a cuckold. Another man was dancing with his wife and the great grand Clayt Monroe wasn’t doing anything about it? The fact that at barn dances everybody always danced with everybody else didn’t make a difference to Monroe, apparently. He wanted to be absolute master of everything around him, and that certainly included his wife. For this reason, he had instructed Linda to never dance with any other man except when everybody was working through a do-si-do.
His other fear was that she would fall in love with somebody else. Monroe was twelve years older than Linda and was beginning to look it and act it. The Monroe family curse was arthritis and it was beginning to slowly but definitely hobble him.
This was around the time I met him on the first of two occasions. It was in a saloon in the small town of Osley. He was there with some of his ranch hands and was enjoying his liquor. When somebody pointed out that there was a Texas Ranger present, he swept over to my table and dramatically shook my hand. He sat down uninvited and began to tell me of all the times the Rangers had helped him out. He was most appreciative. This was also the first time I saw Linda. She was at a lone table in the shadows of the back. Monroe went on and on about the Rangers—I figured he’d produce a trophy of some kind and he’d hand it to me—when I saw one of the bartenders lingering at Linda’s table. Monroe’s gaze followed mine.
With no warning and no excuse to me, he was up and stalking to the rear of the place. The bartender’s back was to him. Monroe spun him around and slashed downward with his Colt, cutting the man’s face as surely as he would have with a knife. The man screamed—not shouted, screamed—and covered his face with his hands, apparently realizing even then that he would be scarred for life. Linda did the shouting and all of it was directed at her husband. Now it was her turn to do that stalking. She went straight outside, through the batwings. I never saw her again.
Nearly three years to the day, Clayt Monroe killed his brother. And not in a fair fight, either. After having convinced himself that Deke and Linda were seeing each other on the sly, he drunkenly wobbled from the house to the stable, where he found Deke in a dark corner. By this time, Monroe had no doubt that his wife and brother had betrayed him. He took his Colt from its holster and opened fire.
We need to stop right here and readjust the picture. Because I’m in it, too. I’d been in the kitchen, finishing up a meal with Monroe. We were alone because Linda, he said, had a headache and was upstairs resting and Deke was tending to chores.
That time we’d had a few beers together in the saloon where he attacked the bartender, Monroe had invited me to stop by his spread if I was ever in the area. Well, I was in the area. I rode out and spent a pleasant afternoon touring the ranch with Deke. He told me that he and Linda were throwing a big surprise birthday party for Clayt the next day. He invited me to sleep over and enjoy the fun. He said that the gift was a bronze statue of Clayt in his gunfighting days. Very dramatic. They’d had the statue made in Houston. They were hiding it in the barn.
I could have told Monroe all this—told him how silly and wrong he was being about his brother betraying him—but at the last of our meal, he suddenly jumped up, just as he’d done in that saloon that time, and headed out the back door. No word of explanation. No word of apology. I noticed he was wearing his gun. I wondered why.
I waited a full two minutes before going after him. I shouldn’t have waited at all. By the time I found him in the stable, his gun was drawn and he was in the process of shooting his own brother several times in the back.
By then I had my own gun drawn, standing there in the lantern-shadows and sweet roadapple smell of the hay, calling for him to stop, the animals in their stalls gentling down in the hours of early night.
He did more than stop. He dropped down a foot and spun around on me. I didn’t have much choice but to fire on him. I didn’t have time to choose my shots. In another circumstance, I would have shot to wound but not to kill. He was obviously crazy, booze-crazy, jealous-crazy. In that millisecond that we faced each other, I glimpsed behind him the bronze statue that Deke and Linda had had prepared for his surprise birthday party.
I fired. He moved to the right just as I did so. Maybe if he hadn’t moved, the bullet wouldn’t have been fatal. But he did move and the bullet was fatal. He paused a moment, firing a shot over my shoulder, and fell sprawling to the stable floor, his blood staining the golden hay immediately. He died at the base of the life-size statue.
Deke was dead, too.
I went back to the house to get Linda. I found her upstairs in their marriage bed. She wasn’t merely sleeping. She was dead. She’d been beaten badly about the face—the bruises ugly to see—and then strangled. My guess was that she’d been dead for some time.
At first I didn’t mind being The Man Who Shot Clayt Monroe. Oh, I said I minded, wanting to sound humble and all, but being interviewed and photographed was a pretty exciting way to fill up the hours of a widower and retired Ranger. I sent my sons the newspaper and magazine clippings, and they in turn showed them to their own children, who, they said, were greatly impressed with Granddad.
Not until a year of articles and interviews and a few personal appearances—and I was pretty damned bad in front of an audience, let me tell you—did I began to understand that the interest was not so much in me as it was in the Colt I’d taken from Monroe’s cold, dead hand that evening on his ranch. People wanted to see it and touch it. It was like a religious ceremony, the way a priest venerates a chalice that has been blessed, the way mourners pass by an open coffin. Sure, it was interesting enough that I’d brought down Monroe, but the weapon was the fascination. More than a hundred newspaper photographers probably took pictures of it; more than a thousand people walked past it on display.
I didn’t realize how much of a legend the Colt had taken on until the first time it was stolen. I’d gone to the county fair that blazing hot afternoon, only to come home to find my house a mess and the gun gone. Turned out later that a local man named Kenny Blaine had taken it. Seems he believed that the gun would give him the power to kill a man who’d cheated him out of some land thanks to a crooked judge. He’d been afraid of the man until he got the idea that with Clayt Monroe’s Colt, he could kill anybody, no matter how fast they were on the draw.
I learned all this when Blaine’s widow came in tears to my place one night to report that her husband’s enemy had shot her husband dead. She was returning the weapon. She cursed it. Said that its legend had filled her husband’s head with nonsense. I felt sorry for her. I didn’t know what to say.
A pair of brothers stole the weapon the next time. They were the Hartson brothers, Dub and Andy, and it was their idea to challenge a gunny named Burt Swander to a fight that would avenge their father’s death. Their father had drunkenly drawn down on Swander one night. Swander had shot him dead with a single bullet. Burt was the first to challenge Swander. How could he lose when his hand was filled with Clayt Monroe’s Colt? Well, he did lose. Swander killed him in front of a saloon full of witnesses. Then Andy grabbed the Colt. Swanders killed him too, even though most of the witnesses seemed to agree that Andy had actually drawn first.
The third man to steal it was a Mexican laborer who wanted to win back his losses from a rigged card game. His fate was no different from the others who believed it had magical powers. The man who’d cheated him cut him down even before the laborer could quite clear his holster.
This was when I went to the local newspaper and had the editor witness me flinging the Colt into the big fast muddy river from which it would never return. I hadn’t told anybody about the men who’d lost their lives using it. That would only enhance the legend—more and more people would try to beat what was clearly what so many people saw as “the curse.” The Colt had stood Clayt Monroe in good company so long as his fights were fair. But whatever blessing the Colt had bestowed on him ended when he shot his own brother in the back. Now there was a curse on it. Or so it seemed, if you were inclined to think that way, which in my serious moments, I wasn’t.
I’d gone to the editor so that people would stop bothering me about the gun. The whole thing had become a burden. I was tired of having my house broken into and tired of seeing foolish men throw away their lives on the belief that a gun had magical powers.
This was what appeared to happen, anyway. The editor didn’t examine the Colt, so he didn’t see that the initials Clayt Monroe had carved in the real gun were missing. He just assumed that my story about being tired of the whole thing was true.
The real Colt was actually in my bottom desk drawer. I wouldn’t be having any more problems with it. Or so I thought.
Most folks, not having much interest in the Colt anyway, accepted my story at face value. That I’d thrown the gun away. That I regretted ever having it. That I didn’t want to talk about it ever again.
But there were true believers. There always are, aren’t there? The people who make their dull lives interesting by dreaming up all sorts of fanciful notions? To these people, the gun had taken on the reputation of a religious icon.
They continued trekking to my house over the next year or so. A lot fewer of them than there used to be. But still annoying. The wink and the nudge: C’mon now, old-timer, you know you’ve still got that gun and so do I. How about just letting me get a glimpse of it?
I never strayed from the official story. I always invited them to dive to the depths of that dangerous river if they were so eager to find the magical gun. I suppose a few of them were foolish enough to do so. And I imagine that a few of them drowned for their foolishness.
There were a few break-ins, too. I was always home. I chased them off with a shotgun, just like a farmer in a farmer’s daughter joke.
And then finally, finally, they stopped coming. The ones who knocked on my door and made pleas; the ones who broke in and tried to steal.
I was left alone. At last.
Or, thought I was, anyway, until the day when I was down in the barn when I heard footsteps and swung around to find Av Caulder standing in the sunlight while I was lost in the shadows while sweeping out one of the stalls.
“I talk to you a minute?” he said.
It was kind of funny how Caulder and I had ended up treating each other after I’d found him in this very barn with my wife all those years ago. Very formal. Not friendly, not unfriendly. Formal, as if we’d just been introduced and were sort of watching the other man to get a sense of him.
I rested the broom handle against the stall, dipped my hands into a bucket of soapy water, wiped my hands on a rag, and walked up toward the light.
The formal feeling was gone. At first I wondered why. Here all these years I’d seen Caulder at church, at the general store, at baseball games, at horse auctions, I’d been able to make my peace with him. I could never forgive him, but at least my rage was under control.
But as I said, that control was gone suddenly. I suppose it was being in the same barn where it had happened, my wife and Caulder. My mind started making pictures I didn’t want to see. Her there naked, shocked and sad when our eyes met—that afternoon she’d changed, and so had I. But Caulder never had. Now as I approached him, I saw the same arrogance that was always on that face. Not even the fear in the eyes could quite disguise the arrogance.
I knew about the fear. He’d slept with one too many married woman. A man named Soames, a man who’d killed his share of gunfighters in New Mexico and had moved here a few years back, was known to be somewhat unhappy about the fact that his wife had confessed to sleeping with Caulder several times. Well, this Soames was more than “somewhat” unhappy. He had let it be known that he was going to find Caulder and force him into a gunfight.
Caulder said, “I hate to bother you.”
I shrugged. He was in the barn with my wife. I’d heard what she’d said to him in the jubilant moment of her ringing pleasure. I felt shame for her, rage for him. “What can I do for you, Av?”
“I guess you heard about Soames.”
“Yeah,” I said.
He tried a smile. “One too many married woman for ol’ Caulder, I guess.”
“Yeah, sounds that way.”
There were tears in his eyes. He was in the barn with my wife. “I hear things, Jake.”
“What sort of things, Av?”
Must’ve been one hundred degrees in that sun. But that wasn’t the only reason he was sweating so hard.
“Things—you know—about that gun. Clayt Monroe’s gun.”
“I threw it in the river, Av. Couple years ago, in fact.”
He licked parched lips. “That’s not what I heard, Jake. I heard—well, that you still have it.”
“Now who told you that, Av?”
“It don’t matter. The thing is—he’s gonna kill me, Jake. He won’t even hesitate. He’ll just kill me right off.”
“Maybe you shoulda thought of that.”
“I shoulda, Jake. I sure shoulda. But that don’t matter now. All that matters now is—” He started to draw the makings out of his shirt pocket. But he was trembling too hard to roll a cigarette. “I just need that gun, Jake. It’s my only chance. Maybe some of the good luck Clayt Monroe had—maybe it’ll rub off on me, Jake.” He had no shame left in him. The tears bloomed full and silver now. “Please, Jake. I don’t blame you for hatin’ me—for what I done, I mean—but you’re my only chance. You and that gun of Clayt’s.”
I couldn’t do it. Much as I hated him, much as I could no longer even pretend that I had made me peace with what he’d done—I couldn’t hand over the bad-luck gun that had gotten so many other men killed. I tried to think of myself as a decent man. And I wanted to be able to keep on thinking of myself that way. I wouldn’t mind seeing him killed, that was for sure, but I didn’t want to have a hand in it.
I nodded back to the stall where I’d been working. “I need to get back to work, Av. I’m sorry.”
He was on me before I could stop him, wrenching the front of my chambray shirt in his hands, spitting in my face as he shouted at me. “You can’t just let me die, Jake! You gotta let me have that gun!”
What I did next felt pretty damned good, let me tell you. I’d waited long enough to do it, that was for sure. I planted a fist so deep in his belly that he not only doubled over, he began puking up whatever food he’d had in the past few hours.
I left him doubled up on the dusty hot ground there and went back inside to the shadows. I picked up my broom and went back to work.
I kept an eye on him, of course. He lay there for what seemed like a long time. I suppose he didn’t want to move. He probably felt safe there. Soames wouldn’t come looking for him here. He could be pretty sure of that.
His horse was just a few feet away.
When he finally got to his feet, he rocked a little on his heels. He looked hollow and unsteady. There was no arrogance left in his face. And then he started to walk his unsteady way over to his horse. Halfway there, he let out a sob that was probably as much for my benefit as his. Caulder was the dramatic sort. A lot of women liked that in a man.
He got himself up into his saddle and then just looked at me. He shook his head, as if I’d just betrayed him, and then turned his mount toward the west.
I looked back at the stall. The same one I’d found them in.
Mae was crying out again. Crying out in pleasure. And then I was seeing those beautiful eyes of hers in that ugly moment—those shamed and frightened and saddened eyes. And the rage was on me now and I wanted to feel Caulder’s throat under my hands.
I was barely aware of it. It was one of those things where you seemed to be guided by some external force.
I went running out of the barn and shouting Caulder’s name.
He hadn’t gone far. He turned around in his saddle and looked back at me.
“C’mon, Caulder!” I said. “I’ll give you that gun. I’ve got it inside.”
It didn’t take long to find it in my bottom desk drawer. Nor long to carry it outside and put it in his waiting hands.
“Oh, God, Jake, I wanna thank you so much. I really need all the luck I can get.”
“Yeah,” I said and I was smiling at him and thinking of the two of them in the barn that long ago day that the worms will someday eat out of my memory. Smiling at him. “Yeah.”
Then he was on his horse and riding away.