The Thicket (25 page)

There was a bit of good fortune, though. Eustace didn’t sober up, but I think Shorty telling him Spot was dead brought him around a little, curbed his drunkenness. He stopped his shambling and started walking quietly and carefully, and before we got near the place overlooking the cabin, we all took to whispering.

Eustace ducked down with me and Shorty, and we worked ourselves up behind the brush on the hill and looked down on things. The light had gotten brighter. The same men were there to be seen, and another I hadn’t seen before, a stubby guy with a raw patch on his forehead that looked as if someone had tried to scalp him but had been unable to finish the job, came out of the cabin and stretched and spat on the ground and looked at the sky to figure the nature of the day. He walked over and looked at the bear gnawing on what was left of Spot’s body. He said something to the big-nose guy, who had returned to tease the bear. The bear wasn’t paying any attention. It was chewing on Spot. The stubby man eased forward, got hold of Spot’s foot when the bear wasn’t looking, and yanked the corpse back and out of the bear’s reach. The bear came at him, but the rope held it and caused it to fall. Stubby laughed. It was the kind of laugh a mean child might make seeing a friend trip and fall. The bear was pawing out at the body, but it couldn’t reach it and instead scratched at the dirt.

I turned my head away and looked at Eustace.

“Poor little guy,” Eustace said. He was careful to keep his voice down, but squatted there on his heels behind the brush he looked as if he might topple over any moment. There were tears in his eyes.

It grew more lively down below, so I turned back to look. That man with the big nose, who had been throwing clods at the bear, got him a long stick out of the fire and came over with it. The man who had pulled Spot away from the bear went over and leaned on a sapling to watch. Suddenly he seemed tired and looked to be getting over a drunk. He said, “Go on and stick him, Skinny.”

The stick Skinny had was red on the end with heat. He started poking at the bear with it. The angered bear rushed to the end of its rope, trying to claw Skinny, but the little man, fast as a rat, would dart back out of the way, laughing, pulling the stick back with him. Now and again he glanced around at his comrades to make sure they were watching him, and then he would go at the bear again, poking him with that hot stick. I could smell the bear’s fur being scorched from up there on the hill. The poor old bear looked tired and ready to fall over. It was thin and weak, pieces of Spot probably the only thing it had eaten in a while.

The man with the stick said, “You ain’t so bad, now, are you, you dumb bear?”

Right then Fatty came out of the cabin. I couldn’t believe it. He was still standing. He had on a blood-spotted white union shirt, too-small black pants that were unfastened at the waist and held up by a belt. He wasn’t wearing shoes. He had on a gun belt and holster with a revolver in it, and a smaller gun was poked into the pants belt against his belly. He looked somewhat feeble, but considering all he had gone through he was surprisingly of sound nature.

After a time, another man came out; that cabin must have been stuffed tight as a full-grown hog in a tow sack. This man I hadn’t seen before. He was tall and dark-skinned and had black hair that was going thin at the crown. He was wearing red long johns and an ugly face. He had on a gun belt with a pistol in it. It looked kind of funny, him in his drawers wearing that gun.

Eustace, all of a sudden, quit squatting and just sat down, kind of loud, but with that man down there yelling at the bear and the men starting to talk among themselves, he wasn’t heard. Eustace sat there with his eyes closed, breathing evenly.

Shorty came close to my ear, said, “I will cause a disturbance, and I expect you to take advantage of it. Do not do a thing until I give you that disturbance.”

“What about Eustace?”

“When I give you the signal, you poke Eustace, gently, and watch your head, because he might take it off with a fist. Poke him and say, ‘Go down and get them.’”

“Will that work?”

“I do not know, but that is what I would try.”

I didn’t find this idea all that stimulating, but I didn’t argue about it. All I could think about was what they had done to Spot and wonder if Lula was in the cabin. I said, “When you start this disturbance, and I tell Eustace to go down and get them, what am I to do?”

“Do you still want to take them prisoner?”

“No,” I said.

“Then we are going to kill every last one of them,” Shorty said. “If Eustace does wake up and goes down with you, I advise you stay out of the path of that shotgun. The blast from it does not sort friend from foe.”

“You got to watch for Lula,” I said.

“I know that. We need to kill everyone outside the cabin before they can get inside and hole up. And at the same time we have to keep in mind that there may be others inside with guns.”

Shorty glanced down at the man tormenting the bear. “I cannot abide an animal abuser,” he said. “Nor do I like the idea of our dead comrade lying down there without his pants and his head chewed on. It is time.”

Shorty crept off then, crawling on his belly, dragging the Sharps along. He went low and quietly down the side of the hill on the left side, toward the big oak that the bear was tied to. The man with the stick was still poking at the unfortunate bear, cackling and giggling as if there couldn’t be anything funnier.

“How you like that, you hairy old fart?” Skinny said, and turned and wiggled his ass at the bear. “You sure would like some of my ass, wouldn’t you? What you get for killing my hunting dogs, you nasty piece of shit.”

Eustace opened his eyes a little, his mouth, too, and then he closed them. I thought: Perfect. He will be as useless as tits on a boar hog.

Although I had a good view of Shorty as he crawled, he was at an angle and behind enough brush those down below couldn’t see him. He inched down the side of the hill and shimmied up even with the tree. He stood up behind it, leaned the Sharps against its trunk, pulled out his knife, and cut the rope where it was tied. The bear didn’t know it was free right away, but Skinny had gotten bolder and was running at the bear, stopping just short of where the rope would reach, poking at it with the stick, which by now had lost its heat, and this time the bear was able to swat it out of his hand. That didn’t discourage Skinny. He began to prance at the bear, then prance back, teasing him, tucking his hands up under his pits and flapping his elbows like chicken wings. It was clear to see he thought he was entertaining, and was getting laughs from the others, who had now turned their attention on him.

He danced in another time, and the bear lunged forward, and then, as the man danced out, doing the chicken wings with his arms again, he came to the knowledge that the bear was still coming and the rope wasn’t holding him back anymore and that an angry black bear can move fast on all fours.

When he realized it, he said, “Shit,” and that was the last thing he said, cause that bear did three things at once. It came up on its hind legs, growled loud, and struck out with its paw. It caught Skinny upside the head and sent him reeling like an acrobat. He tumbled along the ground for a goodly distance and then flopped limply into the fire. His hair caught ablaze and his head did, too.

Cut Throat, who was near the front door, leaning against the cabin wall, hooted out loud. Nigger Pete, who was nearby, started laughing himself, along with the others, including Fatty, who had to hold his wounded stomach when he did. Their dead pal’s demise was funnier than a puppet show until the bear came running toward them, dragging that rope. Their guns came out and they started firing, but if they hit that bear once I couldn’t tell it. That bear was the distraction Shorty had given us. I reached out and grabbed Eustace’s knee, said, “Go on down the hill shooting.”

Eustace opened his bloodshot eyes and looked at me, and I tell you, I saw something in those eyes I’ve never seen before or since, and I’m comfortable with that. I pointed down where all the laughing was going on.

Eustace, without one ounce of sneak about him, rose up, plowed through the brush, and started downhill, toting that four-gauge like it was Excalibur.

The noise of the bear, the laughter, and all those gunshots had brought everyone out of the cabin, including two men we hadn’t seen before, both of them stout boys carrying pistols. They were undoubtedly twins, and mighty ugly twins at that.

Eustace was halfway down the hill when he started up a hooting sound, like an owl trying to give birth to a watermelon-sized egg. I ran down there, too, going a little wide and to the right of Eustace. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Shorty coming out from behind the tree to the far left, where the bear had been tied.

Even with Eustace making that sound, and us in plain view, that bear still had their attention, as it had taken to running around out there in the yard in a confused and circular manner. The men were still firing at it with the same lack of success. The bear finally ran right through the middle of what I guess you could call the front yard, around the edge of the cabin, and galloped down the road fast as any horse, dragging that rope like it was a snake chasing it.

By this time we were on them. It was good we had gotten close, as Eustace had the shotgun and would need to be right on top of them, and, as I have said, my skills with a pistol are such that I might have been better trying to catch them individually and beat them to death with it. Shorty would be all right with his Sharps, though it was a slow loader compared to the pistols he carried.

Just as the bear made his exit and we were down on them, out the front door came Lula. She was wearing her same clothes, but they had gone ragged. Her fiery hair was bound up and had a pointed stick through it as a kind of twist-pin. She looked thin and haggard and a lot older than I remembered. Her looks wasn’t something I could dwell on, though, because the ball had started.

L
ula saw us about the time I saw her. She didn’t seem to recognize me, but she realized I was toting a gun, and that led her to darting back inside the cabin. Fatty rushed inside with her.

The twins had moved to the side of the cabin to watch the bear’s retreat and had just now figured we had shown up. They turned and started shooting at me at the same time I was shooting at them. Bullets were flying every which way, but after they fired six shots and I fired four, wasn’t nobody hit on either side, though I felt a couple of bullets had come close enough to me that you might could have called us companions.

Now, I can’t tell you all that Eustace done while I was trying to shoot one of those twins, but I heard his pistol popping, and when I glanced at him I saw he had the shotgun still in his left hand and had pulled his pistol and was shooting it at Cut Throat. I only seen two of his shots fire, because I had fallen down, a stray shot from either Cut Throat or Nigger Pete having gone low and clipped off my right boot heel. I fell on my ass, which was a good thing, because the next shot fired at me by Nigger Pete—who, I might add, was shooting crossways of Cut Throat—would have split my head open had that heel not gone out.

The two sin-ugly twins come running out at me then as I was firing from the ground my last two shots and missing with both of them. That’s when Eustace dropped his pistol and wheeled the shotgun around on them, even as a shot from Cut Throat hit him in the shoulder. I heard the Sharps crack, and Nigger Pete went back against the outside cabin wall and made with a grunt. It seemed like a long time before Shorty made that shot, but you got to understand this was all happening fast, and frankly some of what I’m telling you I put together later, or realized in some part of my mind, but as you might expect, I was at that moment not concentrating on it.

Eustace’s shotgun opened up, and those two twins danced a little in their spot as that bad buckshot tore through them. When the one closest to me turned, I saw his belly was gone and there was a hole the size of a baby’s head in him. The other twin took some of the shot in the face. He screamed and grabbed at his chin.

I heard a noise behind me, a whooping sound, turned to see Winton on horseback come leaping out of the brush and down the hill, a revolver in either hand. He looked magnificent. I don’t know if it was Nigger Pete or Cut Throat, but one of them shot him clean out of the saddle, mostly by accident, I figure, and then shot and killed the horse, which rolled over on Winton and then kept rolling.

I had snapped off all my shots, and so far I had managed to knock some bark off the rough logs of the cabin but had yet to draw any blood. I heard Shorty’s Sharps snap and Nigger Pete yell something at him, but beyond that I was struggling to put shells from my gun belt into my pistol, me still lying on the ground as it were.

I got it loaded, but the ugly twin with part of his chin knocked off was still standing and was reloaded, too. He ran at me shooting, the bullets hitting around my head like raindrops. He got to where he wasn’t fifteen feet away, yet he was still missing, not only because he was a bad shot like everyone else but Shorty, but because he was crazy over his brother getting blown away. By then he was right on me. I knew the only thing left for me were harp lessons and a set of wings, and that’s when I heard Eustace cock back the mule-ear hammer on that four-gauge and cut down with it again. That twin went away in a spray of blood, the load in that barrel being a mite heavier than the previous and the shot managed from a closer position. My head rang like someone had mistaken it for a bell.

A little man who I hadn’t seen before hopped out of the doorway with a pistol and fired. The shot knocked Eustace’s hat off, and then a second shot hit Eustace, who acted like he had been stuck with a tack. I think the only reason he got hit at all was because he was a much bigger target than the rest of us, and though that may have also explained the horse, it didn’t explain the bear. After the hopping man took that shot, he leaped inside the cabin again.

By this time I was loaded and Cut Throat had run into the cabin, damn near knocking the little hopping man down. Eustace was trying to get shells out of his pocket and load the shotgun. All of a sudden he sat down and then lay down; not like the shots had done him much harm but like the liquor had caught up with him.

I glanced at Nigger Pete, who was hunkered down and wounded, his back against the cabin wall. He was firing at Shorty but hadn’t so much as landed a single shot. Shorty had the Sharps loaded again, fired, and hit Nigger Pete in the chest, a shot that would have killed a buffalo, but still Nigger Pete didn’t die.

“You little bastard,” Nigger Pete said, then stood bolt upright and started running at Shorty. Shorty dropped the Sharps and pulled his pistol and snapped off three shots. All three hit Nigger Pete because I could see the dust on his shirt powder up. This didn’t drop him, but it made him turn and go for a run around the side of the cabin, moving fast enough to give that bear’s pace a run for its money. Shorty started after him. I could hear him firing his revolver as he ran.

I sat myself up and fired at the hopping man in the doorway, snapping off shots as fast as I could. I missed time after time, and then he ducked back inside, out of sight. That’s when a tall man wearing nothing but boots come charging out of the cabin right at me with a bowie knife. I guess he hadn’t got the signal that this was a gunfight, and I had a sincere doubt this was his regular method of dress for such a ruckus, but when I fired at him, still sitting as I was, my chambers were empty.

Pulling myself to a crouch, I was going to try and ward him off with the pistol when out from the side, like some kind of white panther, came Jimmie Sue. She clung to that naked man’s neck and yelled out, “Leave my man alone.”

The naked man flung her off his back with a shrug, then come at me. That’s when Hog come bolting from over the hill and leaped right at that naked man, seeming to fly. Hog hit him in the chest so hard it took his legs out from under him. The man tried to get up, but Hog got him by the leg and started shaking him about. Hog finally swung him loose, and before he could grab him again, the naked man stabbed out at Hog and caught him a good one behind the neck. Hog jerked away with a squeal, and in that instant, the naked man came at me again. I fought back, using my gun as a club. He cut at me at the same time I swung my pistol. My blow was just ahead of his knife, though, and I cracked him down the middle of the skull. Still, he cut me across the stomach.

I staggered back, holding my belly. Hog hit him again, right about the calf, coming at him like a cannon shot. It sent the naked man flying, and before he could recover, Hog dragged him off and out of sight into the woods, crashing him through the brush and him screaming like someone had run a weasel up his ass.

When my courage was up, I looked down at my wound. Amazingly, it wasn’t bad. Missing the heel on my boot, I walked over to Jimmie Sue like a man with one foot in a ditch. She was crying. She went straight away to pulling up my shirt, expecting my guts to be hanging out. But it had only cut through my shirt and bit my skin a little bit. There was more blood than there was wound.

“Come on,” Jimmie Sue said, and started dragging me away.

“I can’t,” I said.

“Come, come, come,” she said, and pulled me over to Winton’s dead horse, and jerked me down behind it with her. From there I could see where Winton had landed, and that the horse rolling over him had flattened his head and face considerably. Wasn’t any doubt in my mind that he was dead as a post.

I handed Jimmie Sue my pistol because she didn’t have one. Later I would learn that when she heard the shots she had panicked and come running on foot, losing her weapon in the process. Hog had run after her. Anyway, I gave her the gun and the gun belt, pulled the Winchester from the saddle scabbard on the dead horse, laid the barrel over the dead critter, and pointed it at the door. I thought maybe I could hit something with a long gun, though that was mostly wishful thinking.

I could hear gunfire going on out back of the cabin. I could hear Nigger Pete cussing Shorty and Shorty cussing back. I lay there for a long moment, said to Jimmie Sue, “You stay here, or run for it would be better, but I got to go get Lula.”

“You go in that cabin they’ll shoot you to pieces,” she said.

“I got to try. You know I got to try.”

“Get Shorty first,” she said. “I think Eustace is dead.”

“No,” I said. “He’s drunk. But he’s no good to me. He might as well be dead.”

She pulled me to her and kissed me. I gave her the Winchester, too. I said, “You keep a bead on that doorway for me with that Winchester,” then I took out my knife and, more easily than I would have expected, pried the heel of my other boot off so as to have even balance. I bounded up and made a run to the far left of the cabin, but in the process I stopped and picked up Eustace’s shotgun and fished a handful of shells from his pocket.

Somewhere out back of the cabin, I heard Nigger Pete say clearly, “I been shot by a goddamn midget.” He said this as if he just realized the other side was shooting real bullets, and then I heard a gun bang again. I kept running until I was at the side of the cabin, and I could look back there and see that Nigger Pete was sitting on a log, and he was hit bad. Blood was pouring out of him like rain out of barrel with holes in it. Shorty was standing ten feet away, snapping an empty pistol. Nigger Pete had a pistol in his hand, but he was having trouble lifting it. “Goddamn you, you turd of God,” said Nigger Pete.

Shorty threw the pistol down and pulled the little gun out of his boot and started walking toward Nigger Pete. Nigger Pete finally got his pistol up, but by then Shorty had shot him in the head, causing him to fall back off the stump.

I took a deep breath and broke open the four-gauge, pushed the big loads into it, then looked to see if there was some kind of window on that side of the house. There wasn’t. I began easing along the side wall of the cabin, holding the shotgun in front of me, realizing suddenly that this beast of a cannon might not only take out whatever bad guys were inside but might also kill Lula. I didn’t have long to think on that matter, because I was halfway along the wall when the hopping man hopped out of the doorway with his pistol, said, “Aha,” and Jimmie Sue shot him in the side of the head with the Winchester. He crumpled and started bleeding out.

“Aha,” Jimmie Sue yelled out.

I glanced in her direction. She had her head raised up from behind the deceased horse. I nodded at her. She smiled and ducked down out of sight.

I was trying not to breathe heavy, but it was easier said than done. I was sure I sounded like I was a bellows trying to heat up a fire and that my heart sounded like I was banging on a drum, but something kept me moving toward that doorway. I could see that the hopping man had dropped his pistol and that it lay on my side of the doorway. I decided I ought to grab onto it so maybe I could manage to have something to shoot that might not take out the whole room, including my sister. The thing against that, however, was my bad marksmanship. I decided on the pistol nonetheless.

My head was throbbing from all the firing, my ears ached so bad from all the gunfire I thought they might bleed, and the stench from the burning body of the bear tormentor was thick in the air, making the coffee in my stomach churn, and there was a taste in my mouth like spoiled buttermilk mixed with copper.

I got my mind back on my business, and just as I was at the doorway, reaching down to get the dead man’s revolver, I heard Shorty yell out behind the cabin at Nigger Pete, “Are you not dead yet?” and there was another shot.

I figured that was a good time for me, since Shorty’s voice and the shot might have put the ones in the cabin slightly off their game for a moment. I stepped through that doorway, the pistol in my right hand and the shotgun in my left.