Curly Bill and Ringo (20 page)

Curly had developed a grudge of his own against Ringo, but he hated to see them behaving like that. It was a reflection on him. He had failed to teach them better. And now that old Parson was dead, he felt more responsible for them than ever. Ma Hatcher would blame him if he stood by and let them get themselves killed.

He gave Cash a hard look, knowing he was behind it. “I reckon you didn’t learn anything out there this morning when you tried to draw on Ringo. If you hadn’t been so damn slow, he would of killed you. He just hated to shoot someone whose gun was still in the holster. It would of looked like cold-blooded murder.”

“I ain’t scared of him,” Cash said, getting red-faced and sulky.

Curly turned his big shaggy head topped by the soiled white hat. His pale gray eyes were bright with scorn as he looked at Cash. “The hell you ain’t.”

“Who the hell does he think he is anyway?” Cash asked. “Killing my dogs like that.”

“Ringo knows who he is,” Curly said. “That’s the trouble with you boys. You don’t know who you are yet. And the way you’re going, you won’t ever live long enough to find out.”

“He ain’t going to get away with it,” Cash said stubbornly.

“Hell, it was your fault,” Curly said. “You could of called them dogs off. I as good as told you what would happen if you didn’t. But you thought it would be fun to watch. Well, you saw how much fun it was. But you still ain’t learned nothing. You’re still trying to play stupid punk games with Ringo. I guess you’ll have to get shot all to hell the way I did, before you learn anything. Ringo warned me the Earps weren’t the sort of men you could play games with. He knew them better than I did because he was a lot more like them. But I wouldn’t listen. I was just like you. I had to learn my lesson the hard way.”

“It’s time somebody learned him a few things,” Cash said.

Curly sighed and shook his head. “I’m telling you, Cash. You don’t know that man. He ain’t like anyone you’ve ever seen before. If you made me mad I’d knock you on your hind-quarters and like as not that would be the end of it. But Ringo ain’t like that. He lets things build up inside him till he explodes. And when Ringo explodes, somebody gets blowed all to hell. You just keep crowding him and there’ll be blood running in the street.”

“There’s already blood in the hills,” Cash said. “I’d just as soon get mine here in town as out in the desert where there ain’t any witnesses.”

“If Ringo wanted to kill you, he would of done it this morning.”

“He prob’ly didn’t because of what you said before.” Cash’s face paled as he remembered how close he had come to being a corpse, but his dark eyes remained bitter and unforgiving. “My gun would have still been in the holster and it might have looked like murder. But that wouldn’t stop him out in the desert where there wasn’t anyone to see who did it. Anyway, I don’t know why you’re taking his side. He ain’t no friend of yours. He already took your girl.”

Curly reached for his glass. “I reckon she never was my girl.”

“Nobody but just them two on the second floor of the hotel,” Cash said. “What do you think goes on up there every night?”

“Shut up,” Curly said. “Miss Sarah’s a lady.”

“Lady, hell,” Beanbelly said, with a dirty grin.

“Beanbelly,” Curly said, “if you don’t keep your filthy mouth shut, several things are going to happen to you all at once, and you ain’t going to like any of them.”

“That won’t change nothing,” Cash said. “Ringo would still be sleeping with your girl.”

Curly looked at Jackpot and saw the malicious enjoyment in his beady eyes. Jackpot was finally getting to see him brought down. “What the hell you looking at?” Curly growled.

Jackpot shrugged. “Nothing,” he said. “I ain’t looking at a damn thing.”

“I think he means you ain’t nothing,” Cash said, and he seemed to be enjoying it a little himself.

“I don’t give a damn what he thinks. His opinion don’t count.”

“I’ll still be here when you’re gone,” Jackpot said.

Curly scowled. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

Jackpot only shook his bald head and didn’t say anything else. It was just like him to make a crack like that and then clam up, leaving you to wonder what the hell he meant.

“I think he means you ain’t got long to go,” Cash said, half smiling.

“He don’t know anything about it,” Curly said. But he felt the same way himself. He had felt this way right before Wyatt Earp blasted him nearly to hell with that scattergun. That time he had gone his reckless way as usual, laughing and talking loud to hide the fear in his guts. But this time he didn’t feel like laughing. His world was coming to an end and it was no joking matter. Even if he survived, there wouldn’t be anything left that he cared about.

“I’ve about had enough of this place,” he said, and went outside, beginning to feel the effects of all the whiskey he had drunk that day. He stopped in the street and looked up at the sky. There were still a few dark clouds and the air was damp and cool, but there was no other sign that it had rained. The thirsty desert had already drunk the water. Soon the wind would be whipping dust along the street again.

He looked toward the hotel—and there she was, sweeping the veranda. She was wearing a white blouse and a long pleated dark skirt. Her black hair fell over her graceful shoulders as she worked. She seemed more beautiful and desirable than ever, now that he knew she was beyond his reach. He swallowed and felt the painful beating of his heart as he watched her.

She got to the end of the veranda and paused to glance along the street, lifting her hand to push the hair back from her eyes. She saw Curly and he started to take off his hat, but she turned away as if she hadn’t seen him and went back into the hotel.

He let his breath out in a ragged sigh and wandered on along the street to the Road to Ruin. There didn’t seem to be anyplace else to go, unless he went back to the Bent Elbow. He couldn’t go to the hotel, and he wasn’t in the mood to go to the restaurant and look at Virgil Duncan’s pictures of zebras. So he entered the Road to Ruin.

Blondie was behind the bar as usual. Big Ella and Crazy Mary sat at a table, looking listlessly out the window at the empty street. There was no one else in the place, despite the fact that it was Saturday afternoon, the day before Easter. No one in Boot Hill had any money to spend, and few travelers passed through Boot Hill, now that the railroad had gone through farther north, bypassing the dying town.

Curly stopped at the bar and glanced at his bloodshot eyes and unshaved face in the back-bar mirror, then looked quickly away.

Blondie poured him a drink and studied his face thoughtfully. “You look like you just lost your only friend,” she said.

“Maybe I did,” he said, as he raised the glass to his lips and poured the raw whiskey down his throat.

“Your girl and your only friend, both on the same day. I heard the news.”

Curly gave her a mean look. “What news?”

“About her and Ringo. The Hatcher boys said you told them. They’ve been in and out all day, talking and laughing about it.”

Curly reached for the bottle and poured himself another drink. “I should of known they’d tell everyone they saw.”

“You didn’t think they’d keep something like that to themselves, did you? Such tidbits of gossip are hard to come by in a town this size.”

“I reckon it don’t matter. It would of got around fast enough anyway.”

“That Ringo sure is a handsome devil, ain’t he?” Blondie said. “Why ain’t he been in to see us?”

“Because of Miss Sarah, I guess.”

“I sure wish I knew her secret,” Blondie said. “Got two handsome men faithful to her, one she won’t even have nothing to do with. You plan to go on saving yourself for her, even after you know about her and Ringo?”

“Why don’t you shut up?” Curly growled.

“Don’t blame me,” Blondie said. “I told you she wasn’t for you. Now I guess you know I was right.”

“I wish to God I’d never seen her,” he said bitterly. “Or you either.”

Blondie’s face got red. “We can solve that easy enough. Big Ella! Throw him out!”

Big Ella got ponderously to her feet, smiling. “It’s time we had a little excitement around here,” she said, and started slowly toward Curly.

He got a good grip on the neck of the bottle. “You better keep the hell away from me, Big Ella.”

“Better let him alone,” Blondie said. “The mood he’s in, he’s liable to do anything.”

Big Ella shrugged and sat back down, and Curly put the bottle back on the bar. “You just made a wise decision,” he told Blondie. “I was ready to bust this place up, starting with Big Ella.”

“Do what you like to Big Ella,” Blondie said, “but leave the furniture alone, unless you want to pay for it. Or work it out, sweeping out the place every day and cleaning the spittoons.” She smiled. “That might be a good job for you, Curly. The rustling business is getting too risky, and you can’t make a living at it anyway. So you better take the job I offered you, before I change my mind.”

“That’ll be the day,” he said, looking at her in disgust. “Women! All they’ve ever brought me is misery and bad luck.”

“It’s only that Miss Sarah who’s made you feel that way,” Blondie said. “You didn’t use to. You sure never made such a fool of yourself over me.”

“I’d be a damn fool if I did. The business you’re in.”

“She ain’t no different,” Blondie said. “You just think she is. All women have got a price tag. Some of them just keep it hid while they’re trying to catch a man. In the long run she’ll cost Ringo a lot more than a woman like me would.”

“You don’t know anything about it,” Curly said. “It’s plain she come from a fine home and family, but she gave all that up to follow Ringo from town to town and maybe spend a few weeks with him once or twice a year when he ain’t doing anything else. It wouldn’t surprise me if her folks ain’t disowned her because of it, and do you think Ringo is grateful to her for all she’s gone through because of him? Working as a waitress and maybe scrubbing floors and doing anything else she had to, just so she could keep following him around. And I’ll bet he don’t even say goodbye when he rides off and leaves her in some godforsaken little town.”

“Then she’s a fool too,” Blondie said.

Curly wiped the back of a hand across his wide flat mouth, brushing the thick black mustache. His high cheekbones stood out in his dark face. “I knew you wouldn’t understand. I’d do the same thing myself to be with her. I’d do anything. Even become a pious hypocrite and go to church every Sunday, if that was what she wanted.”

“You, in church!” Blondie exclaimed in amazement.

“I’d sing and say ‘Amen’ louder than anyone.”

“I’ll bet you would at that,” Blondie said, with an unladylike laugh.

“You damn right I would,” Curly said, reaching for the bottle to pour himself another drink.

He nearly spilled the whiskey, because at that very moment he heard the Bishop kid’s piercing whistle down toward the stable. That whistle had become downright alarming, at least to Curly, for he knew Ringo better than anyone else did. He had told Cash that Ringo let things build up inside him until he exploded, but sometimes that point was reached a lot sooner than anyone expected, including Ringo himself. Sometimes other things had already been building up in him for days, things known only to Ringo, and almost anything could trigger a violent explosion.

But when Curly looked through the window and saw Ringo stepping into the street from the hotel, his strong brown face looked calm and composed. He showed no sign that he had even heard the boy’s taunting whistle. Curly noticed that he was wearing a different coat, the traditional black frock coat of a professional gambler, which was how he usually made a living—and also how he had acquired that well-known poker face. He strolled across the street toward the general store and was soon out of Curly’s sight.

“Why does Billy whistle like that every time Ringo leaves the hotel?” Blondie asked.

“The first time or two he did it to warn the Hatcher boys,” Curly said, still uneasily watching the empty street through the window. “But when he saw Ringo didn’t like it, he started doing it just to annoy him. I think he’s trying to provoke Ringo into a fight. He’s dreaming of himself as the kid who killed the notorious Johnny Ringo. But he’ll never make it.”

“Cash says he thinks Billy is faster than Ringo,” Big Ella said.

“Faster or not, Ringo will kill him if they get in a fight,” Curly said.

He heard one of the Hatcher boys whistle in front of the Bent Elbow, apparently summoning Billy, because a minute later they all came up the street, whistling when they passed the general store where Ringo was.

Curly swore softly and strode to the batwings, just in time to see Ringo come out of the store, his face swollen with anger and his eyes glittering like ice. Then Ringo’s glance went to the hotel and he started back that way, clearly intending to ignore Billy Bishop and the Hatcher boys. By then they were about twenty feet past the store, walking on up the street with their backs to him.

But Billy Bishop suddenly stopped and turned around to face Ringo. The Hatcher boys exchanged sly but tense looks and then moved aside to watch from the edge of the street.

“Billy!” Curly called.

But the boy gave no sign that he had heard. He kept his back to Curly, watching Ringo. As long as he lived, Curly would see them facing each other there in the narrow wagon-rutted street. Billy was wearing a shapeless old hat and a baggy light-colored shirt that was stained with dirt and sweat, and his straw-colored hair stuck out over his ears. Ringo stood straight and tall in his black hat and coat, perfectly relaxed except for a little tension in his jaws and a tightness around his narrowed eyes.

“You sure wiped them dogs out quick,” the Bishop kid said. “But dogs can’t shoot back. I’d like to see you try that on me.”

“Don’t make me kill you, boy,” Ringo said quietly.

Billy snorted with scorn. “I ain’t scared of you!”