Curly Bill and Ringo (17 page)

“He rode in just before it started raining.” A pale gleam appeared in the boy’s eyes. “Didn’t say a word. Just left his horse and went back up the street to the hotel.”

“That black horse sure gets around,” Curly said. “I’ve noticed it before.”

“How’s that, Curly?” the kid asked.

Curly just shook his head and walked up the street through the drizzling rain. He was thinking about the horse he had heard in the willows and the click of the gun. Ringo must have done some pretty fast riding to get back to town ahead of him, he thought. Curly had been on a pretty fast horse himself.

He turned into the Bent Elbow and found Beanbelly at the bar, drinking beer and eating some crackers and cheese he had got at the store. Beanbelly was always eating something.

“That all you got to do?” Curly asked, motioning for a drink. “I thought you and Comanche Joe were going to follow us.”

Beanbelly shrugged. “When I saw it was gonna rain I knew you’d be coming back.” Then he asked, “Where’s Cash?”

“Went home to get the dogs. Where’s Comanche Joe?”

“I left him at the shack. He likes to sleep when it’s rainy like this.”

Just then they heard a sharp whistle from the direction of the stable.

“That’s Billy,” Beanbelly said. “Letting us know Ringo’s coming.”

“Does he stay at that damn crack all the time?”

“Just about. When he ain’t practicing his draw. Since Uncle Willy left he’s just been letting the manure pile up. He don’t figger he’ll ever get paid anyway.”

They fell silent and a moment later Ringo came in brushing the rain from his black clothes. He had heard the Bishop kid whistle and his jaw stuck out in anger. His blue eyes were like ice as he stopped at the bar in front of the bottle and glass that Jackpot was already setting out.

“Is that necessary, Curly?” he asked.

Curly stiffened at the cool, reserved tone. “What’s that?” he asked.

“That clown whistling like that every time I step out on the street,” Ringo said, pouring himself a drink.

Beanbelly cleared his throat and left the saloon, leaving Curly and Ringo alone, except for Jackpot, silent and surly behind the bar.

“That wasn’t my idea,” Curly said. “But you’re a dangerous man, Ringo. When you start prowling the street, some folks might like to know about it so they can stay out of your way.”

“It’s not a joking matter, Curly.”

Curly’s eyes narrowed. “Then let me tell you something that will make you laugh. I found Rattlesnake Sam and Scar-face Harry lying out in a wash. They’d been blown apart with a shotgun. Scar-face got it in the back. Of course, that’s the best way to approach a man who couldn’t hear it thunder.

“But that ain’t the funny part. I heard a horse over in the willows and when I started to go in for a look, somebody cocked a gun. I reckon he didn’t want anyone to see who he was, and I’m a man who can take a hint. I turned around and got out of there. He must of had a good laugh about it. But I reckon the man ain’t got no sense of humor. Not if it was who I think it was.”

“It wasn’t me, Curly,” Ringo said quietly. “Someone beat me to them.”

Curly looked at him through hard bitter eyes. “You expect me to believe that?”

‘’That’s up to you,” Ringo said. “But it wasn’t me.”

“Let’s put it another way,” Curly said. “If it had been you, would you tell me?”

Ringo thought for a moment and then said, “No, I don’t guess I would. It would be like putting it in a newspaper.”

Curly reached for his empty glass. “I reckon that tells me all I wanted to know. If that was my shotgun you used, I want it back.”

“I already told you, I don’t have your shotgun,” Ringo said, still quiet and calm, keeping his temper under control. “I sold it.”

“Funny I don’t remember anything about it.”

“You were half out of your head with fever,” Ringo said. “But you said it would be all right and I thought you knew what we were talking about. We were both broke and there wasn’t anything else to sell. Nothing we could do without.”

“I don’t recall you ever being broke,” Curly said. “The rest of us were usually broke, because you always won all our money gambling.”

“Somebody else must have won it that time, because I was flat broke.”

“Have it your way,” Curly said. “But I’d sure hate to get shot with my own gun.”

Ringo looked at him for a long moment out of his clear direct blue eyes. Then he sighed and said, “You make me mighty sad, Curly. You’re the only man I’ve wanted to confide in lately, but you’re the last person on earth who could ever keep anything to yourself.”

“I don’t know what good it does to keep everything a secret. It’s usually better to get things out in the open and let people know where you stand. It saves a lot of misunderstanding.”

“Just trust me, Curly,” Ringo said. “Is that too much to ask?”

“I’ll start trusting you when you start telling me the truth.’’

Ringo stared at him in amazement. “Aren’t you getting us mixed up, Curly? If either one of us is a liar, it’s not me.”

“You know something, Ringo?” Curly said, giving him a hard bright stare. ‘’I’m beginning to wonder if I ever liked you as much as I thought I did.”

Ringo nodded, and there was no anger in his face, just a kind of quiet sadness. “I figured you’d come to that conclusion sooner or later. I’m surprised it took you so long. But I wish we could have just gone our different ways without any hard feelings.”

“I feel the same way,” Curly said. “But I ain’t no fool, Ringo, even if I do act like one sometimes. Uncle Willy sent for someone to get rid of us rustlers, and you’re the one who came.”

“He didn’t send for me,” Ringo said. “But I think you’re right about him sending for someone. The day I arrived he came to the hotel trying to feel me out. He seemed to think I was someone else.”

“Did he say who he was expecting?”

Ringo shook his head. “He was mighty cautious about it. And when he realized he wasn’t going to learn anything from me, he clammed up and got out of there. I guess he realized I wasn’t the man he was looking for.”

“But you know who the man is?” Curly asked, watching him closely.

“Yes, I do,” Ringo said.

“But you can’t tell me?”

Ringo shook his head. “I promised him I wouldn’t.”

“Why did you do that?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Suit yourself,” Curly said, turning back to his whiskey. “But until you do tell me, I reckon I’ll go on believing there ain’t anyone but you.”

“That’s your privilege,” Ringo said in a cold indifferent tone. He laid some money on the bar and left the saloon.

The moment he stepped outside, the Bishop kid whistled. Apparently he did it just to annoy Ringo, and not to warn the Hatcher boys or anyone else that Ringo was abroad. Cash hadn’t even got back to town, Comanche Joe was at the shack, and Beanbelly had probably gone straight to the stable and told Billy what Ringo had said. The kid himself had seen Ringo’s face get hard with anger when he heard the whistle, and now it had become something of a game, a malicious childish prank.

Or was he deliberately trying to goad Ringo into a fight? If he killed Ringo in a gunfight, he would suddenly be famous, known far and wide as the youth who had killed the deadliest gunfighter in the West. It was enough to turn almost any boy’s head.

Ringo stopped for just a moment outside the batwing doors. But he didn’t look down toward the stable, knowing the kid was hidden inside. He turned in the other direction and walked back to the hotel in the rain, his face like stone.

Curly put away half of a quart bottle of whiskey in the next half hour or so. He was disgusted with himself for his inability to let the stuff alone, especially when things were going badly or not going at all. But mostly he blamed Jackpot for always opening up so early, trying to rake in every penny he could. Curly was half aware of the short bald man standing over behind the bar, not saying a word, but watching him with a malicious satisfaction in his beady eyes. It was plain to him that Curly’s luck had run out, and he figured it was what the big rustler deserved. Curly had never cultivated his friendship or valued his opinion, seeing him as a negative or at best a neutral nonentity, and now paid no attention to him. Curly had more important things on his mind.

After a while he looked out and saw that the rain had stopped. He went outside and looked up like a cold lonesome wolf who didn’t feel like howling. Ragged black clouds hung in tatters from the sky and it looked to him as if the sun might never shine again. After glancing about through bleak, bleary eyes, he went to the restaurant for coffee and pie, hoping it would cheer him up.

Zebra Duncan was there, not doing anything much, and he automatically reached for his faded pictures of zebras and asked, “Have you thought any more about Africa, Curly?”

“Africa sounds better all the time. If I’m still alive at the end of the week, we’ll give it some serious thought.”

“This is the end of the week, Curly,” Zebra said, giving him an odd look. “And I thought you’d already been giving it some serious thought.”

“Well, I have,” Curly lied. “It’s just that I don’t know as I want to trade my Appaloosa in for a zebra just yet.”

“Them striped horses are better,” Zebra said. “Take my word for it.” He glanced out the window. “Good Lord, what’s that?”

Cash was riding down the street in the midst of his pack of curs. There was a kind of dumb wonder in their eyes. They had never been in a town before and didn’t know what to make of it. The town didn’t know what to make of them either. Before their arrival there hadn’t been a single dog in Boot Hill to keep people awake at night barking and snap at their heels when they walked down the street. Now there were five of the meanest, noisiest mongrels ever to breathe God’s air, and they showed their vicious nature the first thing by chasing old Darius Winkler back into his hotel when he came out on the porch to gape and blink in wonder. Cash didn’t even try to call them off. He just rode on down the street chuckling about it.

Before he got back from the livery stable, the dogs treed Curly in the restaurant, roaring like lions and trying to leap in at him when he opened the door a crack. He was not surprised. He told himself it was bound to happen, the way his luck had been going. But his face darkened with rage all the same and he cursed the dogs savagely, trying to kick the old bitch, but nearly losing the toe of his boot and the toes of his foot in her mouth.

Zebra stood by to give unsolicited advice. “I’ll get their attention while you sneak out the back way.”

“Not for no mangy curs, I ain’t,” Curly snarled. “Cash will be back in a minute and I’ll make him call them off.”

“I’ll bet there ain’t no dogs like that in Africa,” Zebra said.

“If there ain’t, it’s because they’ve been eaten by the cannibals when they couldn’t find any people to eat,” Curly grunted.

Zebra looked uneasy. “You’re pullin’ my leg, ain’t you, Curly?”

Curly saw Cash coming back from the stable and he stuck his head out and yelled, “Call them dogs off, Cash! I ain’t in no mood for this!”

“Even if there are a few cannibals,’’ Zebra said, “we could outrun them on our zebras.”

“Maybe they’ve got zebras too,” Curly said. “Cash!”

“I thought you said them foreigners didn’t know how to ride.”

“Hell, I thought you said that.”

Zebra scratched his head. He was getting up around forty and his hair had started turning gray. “Maybe it was me.”

“Shut up, dammit!”

Zebra jumped as if he had been hit. “Do you mean me, Curly, or the dogs?”

“Both. Cash!”

Cash took his own sweet time coming up the street and then stood grinning at Curly and the dogs. “What you doing in there, Curly? Them dogs got you treed?”

“I ain’t in no mood for this, Cash!”

“You already said that.”

“That’s because I meant it!”

Cash said a few sharp words to the dogs and they put their tails between their legs and quit barking. It was uncanny how he could make those wild curs behave. Curly wished to God he knew the secret. But it was a mystery even to Cash himself. He didn’t understand the strange power he had over them. Unlike Ma Hatcher, he never had to use a broom or a stick on them.

Curly stepped outside cautiously, never taking his eyes off the dogs, but they didn’t bark or bite. “Someone is sure to kill them dogs,” he said. “In self-defense.”

“They better not bother my dogs,” Cash said.

Curly went back down the street to the Bent Elbow and Cash and his curs tagged along. Just as they got to the saloon, the Bishop kid whistled and they saw Ringo come out of the hotel with his saddlebags and blanket roll under his left arm. The dogs also saw him and went roaring to the attack.

Curly suddenly noticed how dark the street was. There were black clouds hanging right over the town.

“You better call them dogs off, Cash,” he said.

“I want to see what he’ll do,” Cash said. “Let him try ignoring them the way he does people, and see what happens. This will be fun to watch.”

“You just keep watching,” Curly said, “and you’ll see how much fun it is.”

The dogs were swarming all around Ringo, roaring and leaping at him, snarling and snapping, but not quite reaching him with their teeth. He came slowly on down the street, looking straight ahead and making no attempt to fight the dogs off or get away from them. It seemed that he was in fact trying to ignore them as if they weren’t there, but there was a tension in his jaw and a growing anger in his eyes.

He saw Cash in front of the saloon grinning and not even trying to call the dogs off, and maybe that was what caused him to do what he did. Or maybe it was because at that moment the old bitch sank her teeth in his new boot.

Ringo’s gun was suddenly in his hand. His first bullet split the old bitch’s skull. Then in a cold silent fury he turned the gun on the other dogs and killed two more of them before they knew the danger they were in. The last two dropped their tails and tried to get away, but Ringo calmly shot them dead. Then he holstered his gun and came on down the street, not even glancing back at the dead dogs, nor at Cash and Curly.

Cash was watching with his mouth open in shocked disbelief.

Then he made a little sound in his throat of grief and rage and started to step into the street.

“Don’t be a fool,” Curly said softly. “He’ll kill you like he killed them dogs.”

“What with?” Cash grunted. “That gun’s empty.”

“You want to bet your life on it?” Curly asked. “Maybe he’s started carrying six bullets in his gun.”

But Cash didn’t believe it and he didn’t bother to answer. He stepped out into the street in front of Ringo and his voice trembled when he said, “You killed my dogs, mister, and I aim to kill you.” As he said it he suddenly went for his gun, thinking Ringo’s gun was empty.

Ringo’s hand went inside his coat and came out with another gun. In a fraction of a second it was in his hand, cocked and pointed at Cash’s heart.

Cash’s hand froze as it grasped the butt of his own gun. There was a dazed, numb look on his face. He didn’t show any fear. He wasn’t thinking at all. His brain had quit working.

That moment seemed like an eternity, and might easily have been one for Cash. Then Ringo put his gun away and looked at Curly in an odd way, as if trying to tell him something with his eyes. But he didn’t say a word. He just walked on down the street, almost brushing Cash’s shoulder as he went by him, but not looking at him again.

Curly looked after the gunfighter with puzzled eyes, half believing he knew what Ringo had been trying to tell him: If Ringo had come here to get all of the rustlers, why didn’t he kill Cash while he had the chance?