Ralph Compton Shotgun Charlie

SHOTGUN CHARLIE

THE IMMORTAL COWBOY

This is respectfully dedicated to the “American Cowboy.” His was the saga sparked by the turmoil that followed the Civil War, and the passing of more than a century has by no means diminished the flame.

True, the old days and the old ways are but treasured memories, and the old trails have grown dim with the ravages of time, but the spirit of the cowboy lives on.

In my travels—to Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Arizona—I always find something that reminds me of the Old West. While I am walking these plains and mountains for the first time, there is this feeling that a part of me is eternal, that I have known these old trails before. I believe it is the undying spirit of the frontier calling me, through the mind’s eye, to step back into time. What is the appeal of the Old West of the American frontier?

It has been epitomized by some as the dark and bloody period in American history. Its heroes—Crockett, Bowie, Hickok, Earp—have been reviled and criticized. Yet the Old West lives on, larger than life.

It has become a symbol of freedom, when there was always another mountain to climb and another river to cross; when a dispute between two men was settled not with expensive lawyers, but with fists, knives, or guns. Barbaric? Maybe. But some things never change. When the cowboy rode into the pages of American history, he left behind a legacy that lives within the hearts of us all.

—Ralph Compton

Chapter 1

The dove’s throaty growls had startled him at first, made him jump right off the bed. Surely she was in pain, some sort of trouble. A bad dream at best. Then it had occurred to Charlie that no, this was a natural sound. And this was as close as he’d ever come to hearing it.

Through a thin lath-and-plaster wall mostly covered with paper—still pretty but not nearly so vivid as he was sure it had been a long time since, with tiny pink flowers, roses he thought they might be, surrounded by even tinier green leaves—Charlie finally knew the sounds for what they were. They were the sounds of a man and a woman doing what he was still a stranger to. Would be forever, he guessed.

And so big ol’ Charlie Chilton, barely fifteen years old, spent the first night he had ever spent in a town, the first night he’d ever spent in a hotel, the first night he’d ever spent in a bed—an honest-to-goodness spring bed under a cotton-ticking mattress and all—and he spent it mostly awake.

He wondered as he was roused again and again from a neck-snapping slumber, if he should rap on the wall. He didn’t want to invite trouble, but he needed sleep. He felt sure when he’d checked in that he was about to receive the finest night’s sleep a body could get.

That the hotel was in the habit of renting out unoccupied rooms for short-term trysts was something that Charlie would not know for a long time to come. But that night’s introduction had startled him. All the long days preceding his arrival to town had been one odd surprise after another, saddening and shocking and worrisome. And so this last one, despite his earnest hopes, proved more of the same.

This was what the world was like? Not much different from the everyday misery of life on the little rented farm with his gran. He’d hoped for so much more. As he listened to the moans and thumpings and occasional harsh barks of laughter from the men, he hoped that at least his mule, Teacup, was safe and sound and enjoying a good night’s slumber in the livery.

It had cost a few coins that he knew he shouldn’t have spent, but he’d never indulged in anything in his life and the money he’d earned at that last farm had burned a hole in his trouser pocket until he’d spent some.

Charlie passed some of the long, noisy night by counting out the last of it, searching his pockets over and over again, sure he’d dropped some of the money somewhere along the way. But no, when after long minutes he’d tallied the figures in his head, he had one dollar and twelve cents left. And he decided then that something had to change. He figured he’d worry about it in the morning, but morning came with little interruption from night by sleep, save for brief snatches.

He left the hotel early, when the sun was barely up. The woman’s cries had continued long into the early hours, then dwindled, allowing him precious little rest. Before he left the room, his eyes had once again taken in the small lace doily, a marvel of hand-stitching the likes of which he’d never seen. He’d studied it for some time the night before, then set it aside.

It was white, with a pointed-edge pattern, round, smaller than his palm, but large enough to fit under the dainty oil lamp on the chest of drawers. When he’d lifted the lamp to peek at it, he saw tiny flowers, a dozen of them arranged in a circle. It was one of the single most pretty things he’d ever seen in his life, if you didn’t count all the wonders nature had up her sleeve.

Those could hardly be topped by man, he figured—a new calf, the soft hairs on its head, how it felt when you rubbed it before the calf awoke, the long lashes on its eyes staring up at you in innocence, spring buds on an apple tree, then how they unfolded over a week or so, the little leaves getting bigger and darker and tougher as the season wore on.

They were special things, to be sure, but that little doily was a corker, maybe because it had no real purpose? Even its prettiness was hidden by the oil lamp. How many folks got to see what some woman had worked so hard to make, hidden as those little flowers were by the lamp? He appreciated them, at least.

And so as he left the room, he spied that doily and thought to himself, Why not, Charlie? Why not have something pretty in your life? After all, didn’t they sort of cheat you out of your good night’s sleep? And so he had slid it off the polished top of that chest of drawers and poked it quickly down into his trouser pocket with a long, callused finger, reddening about the neck, cheeks, and ears even as he did so.

By the time he reached the bottom of the long staircase in the lobby of the hotel, he felt as if his entire head might catch fire. He shuffled toward the front door and thrust a hand into his pocket. His fingers tweezered the crumpled little doily. He would set it on the counter and leave, walk right out. It was so early no one was there. He lifted it free and that was when he noticed the desk clerk, same man as the night before, in the mirror, was watching him from across the big room where he was busy sweeping the hearth of the great fireplace. How had Charlie not seen the thin, pasty-looking man when he came down the stairs?

Charlie nodded. The man watched him, didn’t look particularly angry. No angrier than he’d been the night before when Charlie checked in. He’d looked confused then and looked more of the same now. Charlie pushed the doily back down into his pocket and struggled with the fancy brass knobs of the lead glass doors, worry warring with fear and guilt in his brain. Worry and guilt that he’d stolen the first thing he’d ever stolen in his life, fear that he’d soon be arrested, and slim wonder too that maybe, just maybe, he’d get away with it.

By the time he reached the livery and, with frequent glances back over his shoulder, saw no one trailing him from the hotel, he became more and more convinced that he and he alone deserved to own that doily, that it was made and meant for him to admire, to appreciate. He rode out of that town and vowed, just the same, never to return to Bakersfield. Just in case.

Little did he know that a few short years later he would be a member of an outlaw gang dead set on committing a crime that made stealing a doily the very least of life’s offenses.

Chapter 2

Charlie Chilton woke in the dark and lay still, trying to remember where he was. Somewhere on the trail, somewhere out West. Far, far west of anywhere he’d ever been. There was a stream close by, and in the dark he heard its constant rush. It was an odd but welcome comfort.

It had been a week or more since he’d seen another person, which suited him fine. He’d been robbed and swindled and cheated so many times in the past few years since taking to the road that he didn’t have much left worth taking. Except for Teacup, the mule.

And that, his sleep-fogged mind told him, was exactly why he was in this forest, off the trail, and had been for a few days. Teacup was poorly and Charlie knew they wouldn’t be going on any farther together, so he’d made camp here. The best camp he could with what little he had. If he could see in the dark, he knew he’d see Teacup standing by the big pine, her legs locked, her bony old head leaned against the tree’s mammoth trunk. At least he hoped she was still standing.

Before he awoke, he had been smack-dab in the midst of the same dream he always had when he was in a bad way. Only thing was, the dream was a good one. Or at least something he could understand, not like some of those dreams like when he was flying or when mountains turned into the heads of sleeping giants or some other such craziness. This dream was a good one. Points of it were sad, to be sure, but it was the warm feeling of the dream that made him feel as he’d not felt in a handful of years of living out on the road by himself.

It always began the same way—he was standing over Gran’s grave, a fresh-packed affair that he himself had dug, then filled. It had been a lot like digging a posthole, only this time when he cracked open the bony ground he made the hole a long, narrow crater from side to side instead of top to bottom. In truth, the old woman wasn’t much more than a fence post herself. Certainly no bigger around, and she’d had the personality to match. Stubborn too.

He couldn’t pretend his upbringing by her had ever been easy, or particularly pleasant. She’d been a stringy old thing with a sour attitude and a resentment toward him that had nibbled away at him the entire fourteen years he’d been under her care—if it could be called that.

His father had been her son, the old woman he’d only ever known as Gran. He knew she had a proper given name; everyone had one. But so far as he could tell, there was little to no proof of it anywhere about the place.

Charlie had never gone into her private little bedroom in the three-room shack he’d lived in his entire life. The day she died, he entered that room for the first time in his life. In fact, he reckoned he should have gone on in earlier in the day, as she was still as a stick when he found her. He reckoned she’d died in the night.

He was surprised when he didn’t loose one tear on her behalf. He figured, despite the fact that she’d been a sour old thing all his days, that he would at least feel something about the passing on of this person, the only relative he’d ever known. But he hadn’t. Instead he felt that same creeping feeling of having lived through her slow-simmering, near-constant anger.

So why was it that whenever he recalled that burial scene in that blasted little dream that wouldn’t leave him alone, it always ended up the same way—him feeling some sort of happiness? No, happiness wasn’t quite the right word for it. More like a satisfied feeling. That somehow everything would work out all right.

It had been what, five, six years since that day when he buried the old woman? Then he’d loaded what few possessions he had on the old mule, Teacup, and headed on up that long dirt track to places unknown. He still recalled, with a knot in his throat and a twinge in his eye, the wide-open feeling that sort of washed over him, like a sudden summer shower on a hot-as-heck afternoon. The sort that feels good right when it happens, but you know you might pay for it quickly because such showers usually meant a choking-hot afternoon was soon to follow.

But right then, when he’d stopped at the end of the long lane that led to the little dirt farm where he’d spent his whole fourteen years, it was still raining, still fresh, still cool, still promising. The hot, sweltering feeling, the uncomfortable edge hadn’t set in yet. He knew he’d miss the place, but only because that was all he’d ever known.

He hadn’t even gone to a school. The one time he’d ever hinted at wanting to go, Gran had simply said no. “What you need schooling for when you already know all you need to take care of this here farm?” Then she’d given him that sour look that made him jelly inside. She’d turned back to complaining about how he was so big he should have been drowned at birth like an unwanted puppy instead of costing her all her life’s fortunes just to keep him in meals.

Charlie reckoned she had been a decent cook. There was never enough of it on the table to suit him, but what was there was always tasty.

And so he’d turned away from the little farm forever, a farm he learned hadn’t even belonged to her—she had merely been a tenant. He’d read that in what few papers he’d found in her things. He didn’t know what would become of the place, but he’d buried her beside his papa, her son and Charlie’s father. The man he’d been told by a few visitors over the years he greatly resembled in size and mannerisms. He had wished every day of his life that he’d been able to know the man. But his father had died when Charlie was but three.

Charlie had dim, vague memories of the man, a big, smiling face looking down at him, reaching to stroke his hair, the weight of a big hand on his head, the rough fingers of a workingman. The same hands he inherited, working the same fields behind the same mule that his father had been trudging along behind when he’d simply dropped in the field one day.

This much he knew because the old woman had blamed Charlie for her son’s death. He’d heard it said to him from her so often that he had never really questioned it, had assumed he’d somehow killed his father.

He felt a kinship with that old plodding mule. He’d taken to calling her Teacup because he liked the sound of the word. He’d heard it said in the little mercantile one day when he was a boy, on one of the few visits to town his gran had ever allowed him.

A woman in a fancy dress and a tall blue hat with purple feathers on it had said the word to the bald man behind the counter. He’d attended to her even though Gran had been in there first. Gran had sputtered all the way home about it in the wagon. She’d even turned to Charlie and said he was to blame.

The claim hadn’t shocked him. If he’d thought about it he would have guessed she would come around to arrive at that discovery sooner or later. In her eyes, everything in life was Charlie’s fault. Well, not everything. Only the bad things. He’d never in his life been responsible for anything good that had happened.

And so, all those years later, after leaving the little farm and its two sad graves, Charlie Chilton had roamed, not expecting much from himself, not knowing much more than the dulling, ceaseless ache of farm labor, plodding along beside Teacup until her own demise, quietly in the night, along a burbling valley brook a good many thousand miles, territories, and states to the west of where he’d grown up.

When light finally had come that morning, he somehow knew what he’d find before he rose, his thin blanket dropping to the hard earth on which he’d slept. Teacup was gone, laid out cold and quiet beneath the big tree. He reckoned when he awoke in the night that he should have gone to her, but what could a fellow like him do to stop the final claim that old age makes?

He wept long and openly over that mule’s passing more so than he did over his gran’s. He’d never ridden the mule in all those years he’d known her, never even thought of doing so. She was a companion, had always been so, not a critter to carry him.

He’d been doing a poor job at prospecting for gold, but he had acquired a pick, a shovel, and a pan. And with the pick and shovel he’d done his level best to bury the old, uncomplaining girl. It had taken him all day to make a dent in the hard root-knotted ground deep enough to roll her into—with much grunting and levering with a stout length of log.

When he was finished, he caught his breath, said a few words over her, then with as much dignity as he could offer old Teacup, covered her with dirt and topped that with rocks, a good many of them as big as or bigger than his head. Soon the jumble was a sizable cairn that he felt certain would keep critters from disrupting Teacup’s resting place.

Charlie felt a twinge of guilt over the big mounded pile, knew her body could feed plenty of critters looking for a toothsome treat, but he twinged even more inside when he thought of his old friend’s body savaged by wolves or bears or lions. He wasn’t even sure what territory or state he was in, not sure if any or all of those beasts lived there, but that didn’t matter. To him, they were all possibilities that didn’t sit well in his mind and left him feeling uneasy.

“Let them find their own food,” he wheezed as he rolled another boulder on top of the pile, for good measure.

By the time he was finished, he was exhausted, his hands were bloodied, and one of his thumbnails had been half pulled off when he jammed it too hard between two rocks, scrabbling to find purchase.

Cradling his wounded, throbbing hands in his lap, Charlie Chilton dozed off, dropping like one of those same stones deep into a pit of dark slumber, snoring like a bull grizz. When he finally awoke, it was to find himself wet through.

It was nearly dark and had apparently been raining for some time. It continued drizzling a solid, sluicing rhythm the rest of that day, on through the night, and for three days following. It soaked him and his meager belongings straight through. He was numb and cold and blue-lipped. It wasn’t until early the next morning that it occurred to him that something wasn’t right. He felt odd, sort of numb all over.

When the shivers began, trembling his substantial frame as if someone were shaking him from behind, he knew it was a sickness. He’d always been in good health, something he valued because his gran had frequently terrified him with sob-filled tales of how his father had died.

“Worked himself to death,” she’d howled. “And with no never mind paid to how his poor mother would fare in the world. I swear he wanted to kill himself. As soon as he come down with those chills and fevers, I knew he was a goner. I swear he done it to spite me. Then he stuck me with you!” She’d jam a little bony finger hard into his arm or chest or cheek and growl another few minutes. She’d tell him that as sure as she was a saint to put up with such cruelty, Charlie would end up like his father and leave her alone in the cold, cruel world.

And now here I am, he thought. Riddled with a sickness that like as not killed my daddy, and me without a soul around to help keep me alive.

It was this long, tight line of thinking that plagued Charlie enough that, despite the racking dry coughs that had begun to shake him alternately with the sudden shivers, he managed to gain his feet and try to kindle a fire.

But the relentless sheets of cold gray rain were more than he could battle. In the end, he managed little more than a cold, wet camp right beside the stone cairn he’d constructed for his dead friend. He stayed there for the better part of a week. Each day that passed felt worse than the one before.

After a number of days, he tried once more to stand, to make a fire, to get a drink, to do anything that felt normal. But none of anything felt normal anymore. All he ended up mustering out of himself were a few tired sighs, grunts, and wheezes. Finally he gave up and leaned back against the rock pile again.

“I expect I am to die right here and it probably won’t take all that long either.” He wasn’t sure if he spoke that or whispered it or imagined it. But that, along with a familiar image of what he always imagined his dead father had looked like, came to him then. It was a smiling face, much like his own, but more handsome, less thick-cheeked, and with a kindly glow.

But that was soon slapped down by the hovering, scowling face of his gran, waiting for what she’d predicted would always happen. He’d end up proving her right. That tag end of a thought burrowed into his mind and left him slipping into another layer of sickness, angry and saddened.

Chapter 3

“You see what I see, boys?”

Charlie heard the voice before he saw whoever it was it had come from.

“No? How can you say no, Simp? You got collard greens for brains? Oh, that’s right, I expect you do!”

The burst of jagged laughter that followed the odd remarks succeeded in pulling Charlie’s eyes open. He jerked back with a start and whapped his head on a rock. The pain of it, hot and throbbing, helped him focus his eyes as he reached up without thinking. The laughter that his painful action conjured swiveled his head and locked his eyes on what he hoped weren’t what passed for angels in heaven.

There before Charlie stood a group of four or five men, all on horseback, ringed before him. Back behind the men stood what looked to be a couple of pack animals, laden with crates and sacks, all lashed down with crisscrossed, well-used hemp rope.

Charlie’s first thought was surprise that he hadn’t heard all those men and horses coming along the path. As far as he could tell, the men, plus the pack animals, were for real and true. They looked alive enough. In fact, they looked like dozens of other hard men he’d seen over the years, always on the scout for trouble. Early in his days on the road, he’d seen a number of such men, men who treated him like an easy payday.

They’d robbed him of what little he had, or at least they had tried to. He’d always been much larger than others his age, so when Charlie grew angry, he had come to learn that others, even seemingly robust, frightening men, men whom he would consider fleeing from, all backed away from him. Fear glinted in their eyes, a look that told him they knew they had made a drastic mistake in picking on this lone traveler.

So when this haggard group of five men woke him, Charlie knew, by the way they were looking at him, that he was about to be robbed. The group of men broke, two walking their horses to one side of him, two to the other, one remaining in the center. Those to the sides slowly circled him, not taking much effort to hide the fact that they were working to get behind him.

He tried to muster up a big voice to bellow at them. He wanted to tell them they’d better look out because he was fast on his feet and twice as mean as a riled-up rattler.

He tried to let his shout rage at them, but all that came out was a big, hacking cough that doubled him over as he tried to stand, sending him flopping backward on the rock pile again.

When he came to, the same men were standing around him, and the older one who’d done the speaking earlier was bent over him. Other than the surprising kindness of the man’s eyes, it looked as if he was about to finish the job that Mother Nature hadn’t quite completed. The old man was missing half of his choppers so that he was gap-toothed. He sported a patchy, dull gray beard that might have had food stuck in it, and topping his lined, pocked face was a dented bowler hat, a bent silk flower, missing petals, drooping from the tatty band.

“Why, boy, you look plumb awful. You tangle with a she-lion or a boar grizz?”

“No . . . no, sir,” Charlie responded before he had time to think, and there it was, his tongue running across the forest floor.

“You hear that, boys? This big young’un here has already shown a heap more sense than the rest of you put together. He knows a sir when he meets one.”

The mumbles and rolled eyes from the other men told Charlie they paid the man’s comment little heed. Charlie refocused as the old man bent closer. It was then that he also noticed the big skinning knife wagging from the gent’s left hand.

Charlie tried to back away from him, succeeded only in worming up tighter to the rock pile. The effort tuckered him out and he sagged back again, working to breathe. There was a rank, unwashed sort of smell too that seemed to come from the old man. At least he only noticed it when the old man and the others had come around.

“Steady, boy. Steady. I ain’t gonna harm you. You’re all tangled in them clothes and blankets of your’n. Knotted tighter than a hatband on a banker’s head. You must have done some thrashing in your deliriums. I’m aiming only to cut them loose from you a bit so you can gain your legs. Though from the looks of you I’d say you’re a fair piece from standing.”

His face pulled away from Charlie and he heard him speak again. Charlie worked to pull in a breath. For some reason he was finding it hard as stone to draw a decent breath.

“Boys! Two of you get over here and lend a hand, drag this fella off of them rocks and lay him out over yonder, well away from this rock pile. Dutchy and Simp, you two mush-heads build a fire back a ways from where he had one. Too close to whatever it is he’s got hidden under them rocks.”

Charlie had trouble following what the old man was saying, but if he heard him right, someone wasn’t walking well and someone else was going to carry whoever it was. . . . He refocused on the old man. It startled him to see the face reappear, closer than before. Again, he was struck by the eyes set in such a craggy face. They seemed kindly. Something about them told Charlie here was a decent sort of fellow. Not at all what he’d looked at first to be.

“Boy, you hear me? Nod or say something if you can.”

Charlie fought for another breath. Then it occurred to him that the old man might be talking to him. Maybe he should say something, just the same. Just in case. He nodded, then said, “I . . . hear . . . you.”

The old man nodded again and smiled, his face inches from Charlie’s. “Don’t you worry. Ol’ Pap Morton’ll take care of you, see you right.”

“What for?” said a voice close by.

Without a pause in speaking, the old man narrowed his eyes and in a grim, tighter voice said, “You get that fire blazing yet, Dutchy? Course not, you’re an idiot. Numb as a . . .”

Charlie’s world pinched out with the sound of an old man’s reedy voice berating someone for something. For what, he didn’t know, didn’t care. All he knew was that he was probably dead or nearly so. Couldn’t even recall how he got to this sorry state . . . about to be robbed or worse by strange, hard, dangerous men bent on doing him harm. Probably leaving him for dead—ha, that’d be a laugh, a joke on them, as he was about there anyway.

Chapter 4

“What I’m trying to tell you, if you’d let me get a word in edgewise . . .” Grady Haskell poked the long barrel of his Colt straight into the fleshy tip of the man’s long nose. He pushed it, held it there for a moment, then pulled it away and looked close before smiling, then laughing. The barrel’s snout left a pucker, a dimple at the end of the long nose. But the man didn’t respond, didn’t jerk away because he was dead. His only reaction was a flopped head that revealed a ragged neck gash that welled blood anew. The wound was not an hour old.

“You, sir, are a plumb lousy conversationalist. Anybody ever tell you that?” Grady leaned in close again, as if waiting for a response. “Hmm?”

Getting no response, he howled again, upended a hazel-colored bottle, and bubbled back a few swallows. A thin stream of the burning rye whiskey dribbling out the corner of his stubbled mouth. “Time to get me a Chinese girl, a long, hot bath, and a cee-gar. Maybe even a steak and an Irish apple or two.” He belched and looked around him at the strange room. It should be strange to me, he thought. I have never before been here. And once I do what I need to here, I will take my leave and call it a day.

He fell asleep for a short time, awoke with a start, determined to kill whoever or whatever it was that had interrupted his earned slumber. He saw no one but the dead man, still slumped as he had been in sleep when Grady had come up behind him and sawed deeply into his bulging neck.

The sight reminded Grady of his long-dead grandpappy back in the Chalahoosee Ridge, back in the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, where he was raised and where his kind still dwelled. Old Pappy, he had been a mean old coon, but he was generous with his knowledge of corn whiskey making. It was a skill he had worked to teach young Grady. But he and Grady had argued time and again on one point—the old man had said that a proper moonshiner must not like his product too much. Oh, he could enjoy it once the day’s labors were through, but there was no call for taking a drink while on the job. And that was something Grady could not abide by.

There came a day when Grady had been entrusted to the operation of the still for an afternoon while his grandfather attended to business in town. Grady decided he’d celebrate the fact that he was nearly sixteen years of age. He’d ladled a dipperful of young, raw corn squeezings. One had led to two, and when he’d been nearly through with a third, along came old Grandpappy, who’d laid down the law, clouting young Grady hard enough to set his ears to ringing. That was when it all happened, when everything in Grady’s life turned for naught. And when he made that unbreakable vow to himself never to put up with another man’s wrath again, why . . . there was no going back.

He’d taken the beating, not saying much. But he’d managed a bottle of the prime stuff down the front of his bib overalls when he left. He’d finished that bottle off that evening and decided he’d not said nearly enough to the old man, so he headed back to ol’ Grandpappy’s place, found him asleep in his chair before the potbelly stove, head slumped to one side. He knew that whenever he talked with the old man it was never a two-way road. The old man always had to have the upper hand, always had to edge him out of the conversation altogether.

That time he’d been determined ol’ Grandpappy would hear him out. So he’d done the best thing he knew to get the old thickhead’s attention—he grabbed up a ball-peen hammer and brought it down on the old man’s bean once, twice, three times. And maybe a few more for good measure; he never could recall the exact number.

All this came back to Grady years later as he sat drunk, looking at a different man he’d killed, trying to hold a conversation with him, as he’d done with ol’ Grandpappy all those years before. The old man hadn’t listened, even though he didn’t talk back to him, of that he was sure. And this one was the same.

But now, when he looked at this man, he saw ol’ Grandpappy, and though the man had been a crusty sort, he was the only one in the whole dang Haskell clan who had ever paid him any mind, shown him any sort of kindness. And now Grady found himself missing the old man, missing the ridge and those green, green mountains more than he had in a lifetime’s worth of Sundays.

“I tell you,” he said to the stiffening corpse, “I don’t know how to get back there, to get back home to the Chalahoosee Ridge. I’ve tried a number of times over the years, but there’s always something that needs my efforts. Something that prevents me from pointing my horse toward the southeast. . . . Hey!” Grady leaned forward, shouted again, but the dead man didn’t move.

Grady Haskell went on like this, conversing with the man he’d so recently incapacitated, for another hour before expiring himself, a sagged mass of angry killer, in the dead man’s other chair.

When he awoke, some hours later, dawn’s sun had begun its slow crawl skyward. Grady’s head pulsed like a hammer-struck thumb with each beat of his heart. He did his best to ignore the voice inside that told him to lay off the liquor and he might well wake up feeling better one of these days. He knew the voice was probably right, but he pushed it down, did his best to tamp it and ignore it and kill it. And the best way he knew to do that was to guzzle back a few mouthfuls of gargle.

He leaned forward in the chair, caught sight of the man he’d sliced open, and groaned. That was something he didn’t need to see first thing in the morning, at least not before he’d taken in some hair of the dog.

“Where is it?” His dry-blood-covered hands scrabbled on the floor by his feet. He usually had enough wits about him to cork the bottle before he dozed for the night. But his fingernails brushed glass. The bottle rolled from him and sounded lousy and hollow. Spent. He groaned again and sank back into the chair. This day had not started well and it was only going to get worse, he was sure.

“What I need,” he said after a few silent moments with his eyes closed, “is a whole lot of money so I don’t have to worry about such foolishness.” And as he sat there, as if it were a gift, a reward for his fine new idea, his gaze fell on a half-full bottle of whiskey he’d not seen the night before. He smiled, retrieved it off the sideboard, returned to his chair, and recommenced drinking and thinking.

Grady recalled what the dead man had told him shortly before Grady had made him dead. He’d whimpered, said that what money he had was in the bank, that nobody but a fool would keep his money in his house nowadays.

The thought of it had stunned Grady, but for a moment. Imagine that—plain ol’ giving your money to someone else to hold on to for you. Grady wasn’t too sure about how other folks might think, but if he had more than the few coins in his pocket, he was dang sure there wasn’t a person on the earth who could do a better job watching over it than his own self.

Grady had come back to his senses in time to drag his blade deep into the whimpering man’s neck, mostly for being impertinent, but also for not having his money on hand when Grady needed it. Banks . . . of course he’d known about them, even been in one a time or two to redeem pay chits after cattle drives—nasty work were those cattle drives. But he had never considered banks to be of use in his own life.

But the more he thought on it the next day, the more the very idea of banks made good sense. He tugged on the bottle again, licked his lips. A wide, slow smile pulled across Grady Haskell’s blood-spattered face, and a low chuckle uncurled itself from deep in his throat. “Yes, sir, I do believe it’s time to stab a big pig in the backside, as ol’ Grandpappy used to say. Enough of this penny play.”

First things first. Grady knew that all the big operators had gangs to help them pull it off. The trick would be in getting rid of them and keeping the haul himself once the job was done.

Grady didn’t fancy sharing much of anything with anybody, never had the urge to do so, in fact, even as a child. But he had no worries about going through the motions of sharing. That was what planning such a job was all about, after all. Now all he had to do was find the gang. He needed a handful of dumb-as-rocks desperadoes willing to do as he told them and then curl up and die when the dust settled.

Another swig off the bottle to seal the deal—at least in his own head—tamped his hangover down to a dull thudding somewhere behind his eyes. Grady stood, straightened his shirt and vest, readjusted his trousers, checked his gun belt, found his dark beaver, flat-crown hat, and saluted the dead man.

“Thanks for your hospitality, friend.” He strode to the door, lifted the latch, and said, “No hard feelings, eh?”

His dry chuckle followed him out the door and continued as Haskell relieved himself against the side of the little farmhouse. Yes, sir, he thought. This is turning out to be one of the best days I have had in quite some time. As he mounted up, he gave thought to the best direction he knew of to find a few men to do his bidding. But most important of all, he gave thought to which direction lay the richest town, one with a big, fat bank waiting for him. And as he wasn’t all that far from California, he believed he knew where to go.

Chapter 5

The raw tang of slow-burning, wet wood tickled Charlie’s nostrils, waking him. Something told him to lift his head, pop open those eyes. Problem was, that was a whole lot harder than it sounded. He tried to run his tongue around the inside of his mouth, but it felt like a raspy river rock and his lips felt as though they’d been hammered together by a burly blacksmith. Same blacksmith whose big fists were playing the Devil’s own band inside Charlie’s skull, enough so that he was sure it was about to split wide open anytime.

“Boy!”

A voice through water, echoing through a cavern, maybe through a split in a big rock . . .

“Boy!”

Someone smacked him hard on the face. Charlie managed to crack an eye open, enough to let light in. Then came another smack, different this time.

“Boy, you hear me? You got to put some effort into this, elsewise I can’t help you.”

Something hit his face again, but this time it didn’t feel so much like a crack to the chops as a wet something. It dragged up over his eyes and . . . he could open the other one. Now both, wider.

There was an old man—but wait, wasn’t that the same old man? Leaning over him? Yes, he’d seen that face, homely as it was, somewhere before. Now he knew, it was the old man who’d come in with those riders. But what did he want?

“You . . .”

The old man smiled. “That’s right. It’s me. You remember?”

“Stop it.”

The old man leaned closer. “How’s that?” He was still smiling.

Charlie was beginning to get annoyed. Who smiled so much anyway? If this was heaven, he wasn’t all that sure he was going to like it. “Stop . . .”

“Stop what?”

“Stop hitting me . . . in the face.”

The old man backed up, eyes wide. “What? Hitting you?” Then his face split wide open in a smile. He turned and said something, and then Charlie heard hoo-raws and guffaws from behind the man.

“He thinks I was hitting him!” More laughter; then the old man bent low and held up a rag. “I was wiping your face down, boy. You done took a chill. Lord knows how long before we come along. By the time we found you, you was past knockin’ on the door. You was taking off your hat and steppin’ on through!” He turned again.

Now Charlie saw faces crowding down close.

“Ain’t that right, boys?”

A chorus of men nodded, all of them looking down at Charlie with more concern than he recalled them having before. As if a bung had been pulled from an overfilled barrel, Charlie’s memories of recent events flooded out. Teacup dying, plain old giving up the ghost. All that work of prying around in the rooty, bony soil to carve out a hole big enough for her to rest in . . .

Then gathering those rocks, the never-ending task of hauling stones back for her grave so no critters could have at her. Then the rains, hard, driving rains that laid him low, in and out of himself, as if he were being dunked one minute in icy streams, and then the next in a boiling scalding pot used at pig killings. Then these men had shown up. He recalled them arranged around him on horses, and he’d felt sure they were about to kill him.

“Boy, you back with us now? I think we should muckle on to you and get you to set upright. Can’t be good on a man’s body to have him all laid out like a corpse when he ain’t one. Less’n he’s sleeping. Mex and Ace, you get on over here and hoist this big boy upright so he’s sitting like a man again.”

Before Charlie could protest, a skinny, freckled redheaded man with a stubbled face and horrible breath grabbed him high on his right arm and a darkish, solid fellow, some years older than Charlie, did the same on his left. This man wore his long hair unbraided, not in any sort of ponytail. It hung down between his shoulder blades and was cut straight across, blue-black in color.

But the thing that stoppered the words in Charlie’s mouth happened when he looked up to tell the men to leave him be. He looked right into the man’s eyes and saw one blue and one nearly black. The man stared right back at Charlie for a few seconds, and then Charlie broke eye contact and looked away.

“Don’t pay him no never mind, boy,” said the old man. “Mex ain’t much for talkin’, but he’ll do in a pinch all right.” The old man slapped his leg. “I recall the time we was up to Lodestone. You remember that, Mex? And we skinned all them dandy gamblers? Hoo-wee, you’da thought none of them high rollers had ever seen an Injun before! And for us to throw ’em one with mismatched eyes? Hee-hee!”

The entire time the old man spoke, Charlie stared at the man’s eyes. Couldn’t help it. They were spooky, like no eyes he’d ever seen. He wanted to get up and away from the man as fast as his legs could carry him. But he was being muckled on to by two men, and as they dragged him upright slowly, sharp pains raked up his sides and made him gasp, and a cold sweat popped out on his forehead.

“Easy, boys. He’s had a time of it.” The old man leaned in. “Boy, you done broke a couple of ribs in all your thrashing and coughing.”

“What’s wrong with me?” said Charlie after a few minutes once they’d let him be and the wave of hot pains had ebbed.

“I expect it’s pleurisy. Settled right into your lungs and proceeded to march up an’ down, causing holy havoc and leaving a mess of misery behind, like Grant through Richmond.”

There was a long silence, and then in a wheeze Charlie said, “I thank you, then, for all you’ve done. I expect I can make it all right on my own now. I don’t have much, but you’re welcome to it.”

The old man sniffed, said, “You travelin’ alone, boy? You don’t mind me asking, how old are you anyway? You seem a bit on the young side, once a fella gets past your size and gets to studying you.”

Charlie didn’t reply, so the old man kept talking. “You must have been traveling with one big pard, because that rock pile you built is mighty big! I reckon it must have been your twin, what with the size of it and all.”

Charlie cut his eyes to the man, then looked away again.