Gunsights - Leonard Elmore John - Страница 10

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When they came in, Edgar Watson drew a beer and placed it on the bar for Bren Early. He was surprised then when the colored man, Bo, raised an old Navy Colt's-exactly like the one kept under the bar-and laid it on the shiny oak surface. The colored man said, “Thank you for the use,” before Edgar Watson realized it was his own gun. Bren Early told him to draw a beer for his friend Bo and Edgar Watson did so. Upon examining the Colt's, he found two rounds had been fired from the gun. Still, when Edgar Watson told the story later-and as many times as he told it-it was Bren Early who had shot the three cardplayers when they tried to kill him.

McKean's Ranch on the San Pedro: October, 1888

Moon rode up in the cool of early evening leading the palomino on a hackamore. He dropped the rope and the good-looking young mare stood right where she was, not flicking a muscle.

“She reminded me of you,” Moon said to the McKean girl, who replied:

“I hope not her hind end.”

“Her hair and her eyes,” Moon said. “She answers to Goldie.”

The McKean girl's mother and dad and three brothers came out to look at the palomino, the horse shying a little as they put their hands on her. Mr. McKean said the horse was still pretty green, huh? Moon said no, it was the horse had not seen so many people before at one time and felt crowded. They kidded him that he was bringing horses now, courting like an Indian.

Moon told them at supper he had been offered a government job as agent at White Tanks, working for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He would be paid $1,500 a year and given a house and land for farming.

All the McKeans looked at Katy who was across the table from him, the mother saying it sounded wonderful.

Moon did not feel natural sitting there waiting for approval. He said, “But I don't care for flat land, no matter if it has good water and will grow anything you plant. I'm not a grain farmer. I told them I want high graze and would pick my own homesite or else they could keep their wonderful offer.”

The McKeans all looked at Katy again.

“They're thinking about it,” Moon said. “Meanwhile I got horse contracts to deliver.”

“When'll you be back?” Mr. McKean asked.

“Not before Christmas.”

“You wait too long,” McKean said, “this girl might not be here.”

“It's up to me when I get back and up to her if she wants to wait.” Moon felt better as soon as he said it.

St. Helen: February, 1889

Bren Early said hadn't they met here one time before? Moon said it was a small world, wasn't it?

Moon here delivering a string of horses to the Hatch & Hodges relay station. Bren Early here to make a stage connection, out of the hunting expedition business and going to Tucson to sleep in a feather bed with a woman and make all the noise he wanted.

He said, “Do you know what it's like to make love to a woman dying for it and have to be quiet as a snake lest you wake up her husband?”

“No I don't,” Moon said, “but I'm willing to hear about it.”

There was snow up in the Rincons, a wind moaning outside, a dismal, depressing kind of day. But snug inside the relay station. They stood at the bar and had whiskey before Bren shed his buffalo overcoat and Moon peeled off his sheepskin and wornout chaps. Then sat at the plank table with a bottle of whiskey and mugs of coffee, smelling meat frying; next to them were giant shadows on the plaster wall, dark twin images in a glow of coal-oil light. Like two old pards drinking and catching up on each other's life, wondering how they could have spent a whole year and a half apart. Neither one of them mentioned the McKean girl.

The main topic: Was somebody shooting at you? Yeah-you too? And getting that business finally cleared up. Bren saying he had come out here to be an Indian Fighter and so far had killed nine white men, counting the first two from the bunch in Sonora (the two Bo Catlett had shot), and two he would tell Moon about presently. Moon, not digging up any bodies from the past, said, Well, you're ahead of me there.

But what about this loving a woman and not making any noise?

“Something happens to those women when they come out here,” Bren said. “Or it's the type of woman to begin with, like to put a Winchester to her shoulder and feel it kick.”

“Or the wavy-haired guide giving her his U.S. Cavalry look,” Moon said. “You wear your saber?”

Bren straightened a little as if to argue, then shrugged, admitting yes, there was a point in that he was a man of this western country; and the woman's husband, out here with his gold-plated Henry in a crocodile case, was still a real-estate man from Chicago or a home builder from Pittsburgh.

“Get to the good part,” Moon said.

Bren told him about the party he took up into the Chiricahuas: the man named Bert Grumbach, millionaire president of Prudential Realty in Chicago; his colored valet; a young assistant in Grumbach's company who wore a stiff collar and necktie, as the man did; and the man's wife Greta, yes indeed, who was even rounder and better-looking than that French actress Sarah Bernhardt.

As soon as he met them at Willcox with the wagon and saddle horses, Bren said he could see what kind of trip it was going to be: the man, Bert Grumbach, one of those know-it-all talkers, who'd been everywhere hunting and had a game room full of trophies to prove it, considered this trip not much more than going out back to shoot rabbits. The wife, Greta, was quiet, not at all critical like other wives. (“How many times you gonna tell that tiger story?” Or, “You think drinking all that whiskey proves you're a man?”) No, Bert Grumbach would be talking away and Bren would feel Greta's eyes on him. He'd glance over and sure enough, she'd be staring, giving him a calm, steady look with her eyes. Christ, Bren said, you knew exactly what she wanted.

She did not try to outdo her husband either, though she was a fair shot for a woman, dropping a mule-deer buck at two hundred yards with a clean hit through the shoulders.

Moon asked if they left deer laying all over the mountain and Bren said no, the guides took most of the meat to the fort Indians at Bowie.

It wasn't all hunting. Time was spent sitting around camp drinking, eating venison steaks, talking and drinking some more, Grumbach belittling the setup and the fare. Bren said he would perform a routine with his .44 Russians, blowing up a row of dead whiskey bottles, which the Eastern hunters usually ate up. Except Grumbach wasn't impressed. He had a matched pair of Merwin & Hulbert six-shooters, beauties he took out of a rosewood box, nickle-plated with carved ivory grips. He'd aim, left hand on his hip, and fire and hit bottles, cans, pine cones at twenty paces, chipmunks, ground squirrels, ospreys and horned owls. He was a regular killer, Bren said.

“And he caught you with his wife,” Moon said.

“Not outright,” Bren said. “I believe he only suspected, but it was enough.”

What happened, Greta began coming to Bren's tent late at night. The first time, he tried in a nice way to get her to leave; but as she took her robe off and stood bare-ass, she said unless he did likewise she would scream. There was no choice but to give in to her, Bren said. But it was ticklish business, her moaning and him saying shhh, be quiet, his nerves alive as another part of him did the job at hand. Five or six nights, that was the drill.

The morning of the final day of the hunt, Bert Grumbach walked up to Bren, slapped his face with a glove and said, “I assume you will choose pistols. May I suggest twenty paces?”

Moon had an idea what happened next, since Bren was sitting here telling it; but he did not interrupt or even pick up his whiskey glass as Bren continued.

Bren said to the man, Now wait a minute. You know what you're doing? The man said he demanded satisfaction, his honor being abused. Bren said, But is it worth it? You might die. Grumbach gave him a superior look and had his assistant draw up a paper stating this was a duel of honor and if one of the participants was killed or injured, the other would not be legally culpable, hereby and so on, attesting with their signatures they were entering into it willingly and pledging to exonerate the other of blame whatever the outcome.

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